Cleaning up Nairobi River will take time, money and miracle

It will take a long time before city residents go fishing or swimming in Nairobi River despite a proposed Sh12 billion clean-up programme that started nine years ago.

Once completed, the programme lead to the overhaul of the city’s sewerage system and see over 125,000 slum dwellers moved from sites near the river.

Despite the multi-billion shilling clean-up drive, now in its final year, the Nairobi River continue to choke with garbage, industrial waste, agro and petro-chemicals and heavy metals among other pollutants which have led to the extinction of aquatic life in the river and made it into an eyesore.

The pollution has led to water-borne diseases and scarcity of safe water for city residents who are also exposed to toxic substances and heavy metal poisoning.

For the clean-up drive to be successful, the Government is expected to contribute about Sh4 billion to the project. Another Sh5 billion will be from the African Development Bank and Sh3 billion from donors.

However, the Government is experiencing a Sh127 billion Budget deficit this financial year while many donor countries are in recession due to the global financial crisis. This could jeopardise the chances of success for the programme.

The plan could further be scuttled by a population explosion expected to reach its peak in the next ten years, once as half of the population, now in their teens, enter the reproductive age.

According to the State of Kenya Population 2008 report released last month, the number of people in Kenya will almost have doubled to about 65 million in 20 years.

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Blue Is the New Green

For a couple of months there, it was sort of exciting to witness how dramatically higher oil prices were affecting human behavior. Ridership of public transit was up, homeowners were swapping exurban houses for urban condos, S.U.V. sales were down, people were walking. T. Boone Pickens threw cash at a wind farm.

But in more recent weeks, as oil prices dropped, I started hearing indications of backpedaling on all of the above. With gas back down in the $2 to $2.50 a gallon range, there was talk of this all being less urgent, something that could be addressed later. Pickens even scrapped plans for the wind farm!

This is such a strange notion: that an interim price drop somehow solves the larger issue of our dependence on oil. And it’s something we see with another precious resource: water.

A range of alternative energy technologies are available to us today; there is, however, no substitute for water. But there are new ways of thinking about water that can help us make better use of the available supply. (Pickens, by the way, is now actively buying up water rights in Texas.)

Although 70 percent of the earth is covered with water, just 3 percent of that water is fit for human consumption. This isn’t going to improve anytime soon. Failures in water-related infrastructure result in lost biodiversity, higher temperatures, increased flooding, massive impact on energy and unsafe, unsanitary water.

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Economic damages from nutrient pollution create a “toxic debt”

Nutrient-rich, oxygen-starved dead zones in coastal areas have been steadily growing in the past few decades. But the problem is not restricted to coastal waters. As a new study published in ES&T (DOI 10.1021/es801217q) shows, freshwater bodies throughout the U.S. are also polluted with excess nitrogen and phosphorus. Such pollution is costing the country a significant amount of money: at least $4 billion is lost annually as a result of the degradation of freshwater sources, the authors conclude.

To understand the true extent of nutrient pollution in freshwater bodies, ecologist Walter Dodds and his colleagues at Kansas State University examined the data on nitrogen and phosphorus levels in water bodies throughout the country collected by the U.S. EPA. Ecologists have broadly divided the U.S. by ecoregions on the basis of geography, geology, vegetation, and human impacts. The authors found that 90% of rivers in 12 out of the 14 regions contained excessive nitrogen and phosphorus, compared with reference nutrient levels calculated in several previous studies. The average total nitrogen was 5.5 times greater and the total phosphorus 3 times higher than median reference levels, Dodds found.

The environmental impacts of nutrient pollution are widely acknowledged by scientists and regulators. EPA has developed water-quality criteria for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, and states are working on plans to tackle the problem. But given that the major contributors to this pollution are nonpoint sources, individual states and EPA have had less success in regulating these sources than they have had with point sources of pollution. Nutrient pollution remains a persistent problem throughout most of the country, but its economic impacts are less studied.

more from Environmental Science and Technology

Second Chance for River Otters

(AP) One of wildlife's most playful critters could be coming back to Nebraska's Republican River after a century long absence.

The state Game and Parks Commission is considering introducing river otters to parts of the river. It would be the first reintroduction of otters to a region of the state in about 17 years.

Otters, which grow to 3-4 feet in length and weigh 15 to 25 pounds, are native to Nebraska and were a common sight to early explorers of the state. But unregulated trapping caused them to mostly disappear by the early 1900s.

State biologists say it's simply time to bring them back to their native Republican River habitat. The 550-mile long river starts in Colorado, winds through a large chunk of southwest Nebraska, and flows into Kansas.

Otters are not needed to control pests or help fill some ecological gap in the life of the river and its inhabitants. Instead, said Richard Nelson, a Game and Parks biologist, the river is "historic otter habitat, and it's our job to restore animals to their historic ranges."

Nelson wants to introduce at least 20 otters to the area within the next couple years.

Otter reintroduction has proved successful in other states as well, and populations are large enough in some states that otters can be trapped for their fur.

In Iowa, the number of otters has spiked to more than 7,000 after 325 were released in the 1980s and early 1990s. West Virginia started releasing the animals in the mid-1980s, and now they can be found all across the state. And in North Dakota, biologists didn't have to do anything: Otters appeared on their own, maybe moving in from Minnesota.

Otters have also been released in Nebraska with success.

From 1986, when otters were designated as an endangered species in Nebraska, until 1991, they were released at seven sites. Efforts to reintroduce them stalled after 1991 when the state lost biologists who had a strong interest in establishing new populations. Nelson said it's unknown what the otter population in Nebraska is now.

Nelson said otters have done well in areas where they have been reintroduced, especially above Lake McConaughy.

"I think we'll be successful along the Republican, but we won't know until we try," he said.

There have been few complaints from landowners in areas where otters have come back. They like to travel - an otter may range 50 miles a year.

Two otters released in Custer County were once found 600 miles away along the Missouri River in Missouri. But the fish-eating animals don't stray far from rivers.

Drought has dried up portions of the Republican River in recent years, but Nelson said the otters would be released on portions of the river near reservoirs that almost always have water. They would probably be released at the upper ends of Red Willow, Medicine Creek and Swanson reservoirs.

Their presence near those recreation areas could give visitors a uniquely whimsical wildlife experience. Otters, which belong to the same family as mink and weasels, show a playful side more than most animals. They're known to wrestle and chase each other, toss and dive for clamshells, and occasionally slide down wet banks.

Otters also have unique attributes among mammals. They are the only marine mammals with fur instead of blubber. And they are considered intelligent by some because they are among just a handful of mammals able to use tools, such as rocks to break open shells.

Varieties of otter can be seen on every continent except Australia and Antarctica, and sea otters are found along parts of the North American Pacific coastline.