Residents of Mutiswa village in Makueni county are fearing another round of flooding after River Kwa Ngesu got filled up with sand.
The villagers suffered sand flooding during the last two rainy seasons but nothing has been done to mitigate the catastrophe.
Mary Mbeyu said the flooding left farm lands and homesteads filled with sand.
"We have embarked on fighting heavy streams passing through the homestead by installing dykes made up of gunny bags filled with sand every time it rains," Mbeyu Mutua told the Star.
The sand had been accumulating in the seasonal river in the last 16 years after the community resolved to stop commercial sand mining.
Seven years ago, the Makueni county government enacted a law that criminalises wanton sand harvesting in rivers. That means most rivers are now filled with sand, a potential situation for sand flooding.
Makueni Sand Conservation and Utilization Act, which was enacted in 2015, yielded Makueni Sand Conservation and Utilization Authority, a local agency charged with promoting conservation of sand.
Heavy rains experienced in the last three years have filled River Kwa Ngesu. It is so much that residents have now converted the seasonal river into a road.
This means that the river basin can no longer accommodate water even when it rains lightly.
The situation escalated during the March-April-May rainy season when the river deposited tonnes of sand into schools, homesteads and farmlands.
The schools affected by the floods include Barazani Girls High School and Yiimba Primary School whose compounds and classrooms have become soggy and sandy.
The head of the sand agency, Halinishi Yusuf, also blames the sand accumulation on deforestation and encroachment of riparian zones.
And with rains expected soon in the area, residents are cursing because it will come with destruction.
"We are living in fear of more disaster when it rains in a month’s time,” Mbeyu said.
The villagers' outcry jolted community representatives, the local administration, the county sand agency and the National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) to meet and come up with an intervention.
The process was however delayed by the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.
Nema has since approved the plan to remove excess sand to create a channel at the shallow river bed and the construction of multiple gabions and two sand dams upstream to cure existing gullies and prevent soil erosion and slowdown the flow of sand downstream.
The county government has enlisted a trader who is set to remove the excess sand ahead of the short rainy season.
"The money which will be made from the sale of the scooped sand will go into making the gabions and sand dams to cushion the community against more sand floods in the future,” Yusuf said.
"Harvesting of the excess sand will go hand in hand with teaching Mutiswa residents on the need to plant trees as we warn them against cultivating on riparian zones to prevent soil erosion," she added.
Makueni Governor Kivutha Kibwana led a delegation of county officials to the area. He said the planned emergency sand removal does not mean resumption of sand harvesting.
“The sand we are removing is only on those rivers which are flooded with sand,” Kibwana said.
