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WETLANDS INTERNATIONAL
Rising Demand, Dwindling Resource
The Laikipia County Water Department’s mandate is to bring clean water as close as possible to every community, which is five kilometres at the most from each home.
volumes decline. This is a 2007 WRA regulation. Field visits are necessary to enforce compliance. Storage dams are needed on River Likii to harvest water during the rainy season. The resource should also be supplemented with boreholes in the forest and the dams desilted to ensure availability of water throughout the year. To ensure proper sanitation and hygiene, water from streams and dams needs filtration and treatment. NGOs have been instrumental in helping the County to bridge the budget gaps within the sector through capacity building and infrastructure development. Quarterly roundtable meetings between all the players would improve coordination and help avoid duplication of projects. WRUA fees need to be regulated and the money put to good use. In addition, these associations need to be more proactive in the protection of riparian land in conjunction with county officials and the local administration. Education, food security, health and industrialisation are the development pillars in our County. These cannot, however, be achieved without sufficient volumes of clean water for all, reinforcing the significance of WRM and WASH.
Godfrey Mambo, Deputy Director Water, Laikipia
This is crucial in the arid Laikipia North where there are neither permanent springs nor rivers. The only available water is groundwater, but abstraction is expensive as the water table is extremely low. Existing water projects have also been overtaken by time. More boreholes are needed. In Laikipia West where there are some rivers, farmers have built intake points that are often destroyed by frustrated pastoralists and ranchers in the dry seasons so that the scarce resource can trickle downstream. The reality, however, is that water is inadequate. The Water Department is planning to establish only one common intake for every community or group to ease regulation and minimise wastage. Additionally, anyone abstracting water from the river for irrigation will be required to have earth dams or pans that can hold water for at least 90 days to ease pressure on rivers when the
Harvesting water through earth dams eases pressure on rivers during dry seasons
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