MUTHIANI: Invest in sand dams for sustainable water solution

Heavy rains have been wreaking havoc throughout Kenya, only months after the country was devastated by drought.

Early this year, the drought situation in East Africa was reported as one of the worst in the region in over four decades. As of December 2022, more than 36.5 million people had been affected by severe drought, with more than 20 million facing acute food insecurity.

The onset of rains at the beginning of March 2023 brought a sigh of relief to many, especially those in the agricultural sector. But these rains have left in their wake havoc.

In the Northern part of Kenya, which was mostly affected by drought only recently, residents are now facing food shortages due to flooding. Close to 500 houses have been destroyed by the floods with 12 people feared dead.

As of late March, more than 36,000 people had been affected by floods in 19 counties, with massive destruction of roads, infrastructure and crops being the order of the day. Livestock that survived the ravaging drought have been swept away by the flood; about 4,000 livestock are estimated to be dead.

The irony in this climate change conversation is how in one county people are dying of drought while in an adjacent county other residents are dying from the effects of floods.

The biggest irony, however, is that Kenya never appears to be prepared for major tragedies. When there is a drought, there are never adequate water reserves, and drainage systems are easily overwhelmed when it floods.

The current government has promised to build three mega dams in each of the 47 counties, but just as with many other promises from government nobody really knows when this will come to fruition.

As we wait upon the promise, what can be done to control the extremities of drought and floods?

The recent surge in the construction of sand dams, especially in dryland ecosystems, is proving to be the most cost-effective technology in harvesting and collecting water.

Basically, a sand dam is a reinforced concrete wall built across a seasonal riverbed using locally available raw materials and manpower to collect water that would otherwise be considered runoff during heavy downpours. One dam can supply close to 1,000 people within a community with constant supply of filtered water, even during dry times.

Sand dams are essential in filtering harvested water and protecting it from contamination by livestock or mosquitoes, which might be carrying diseases. The difference between a sand dam and an ordinary dam is the fact that sand dams have sand which slows down the evaporation of the collected water.

Unlike ordinary dams, a sand dam would take a maximum of two weeks to construct with the help of local manpower from the community members. Such a dam can serve close to 200,000 households in a given community. Generally, sand dams can last close to 100 years without requiring major renovations and refurbishments, and this aspect makes them cheaper.

In Kenya, sand dams are becoming common, especially in dry areas where 130 dams are built every year in counties such as Makueni, Kitui and Machakos. Globally, nations like Brazil, Angola and India are also picking up this trend.

The county governmens have an important role to play when it comes to enforcing the construction of sand dams. In counties such as Moyale, where heavy downpours have even rendered roads impassable, water that would otherwise have been collected and used in future has gone to waste.

It is upon the MCAs, senators and governors of the various counties to put both feet in the mud and collaborate with community members to change the narrative and break the drought–flood cycle that haunts Kenya yearly.

Corporate communications and public relations practitioner at Edelman Kenya