Shrinking waterfront hits shipping on Lake Victoria

By MWANGI MUIRURI

Dropping water levels for Lake Victora is threatening shipping and ports along the lake as the shoreline recedes.

The problem is directly linked to degradation of the water catchment areas that feed the lake’s waters.

Minister for Water Development, Charity Ngilu, said the Lake, which has a major economic impact on the country’s economy, is the latest casualty of receding water levels, that has also affected Lake Naivasha.

“Ship and port operators using the Lake Victoria have already complained that the volume of freight transported by ship has dropped drastically. Vessels have found it difficult to dock at the lake ports of Jinja, Kisumu, Mwanza and Port Bell,” she says.

Huge losses

Cargo and passenger ships plying the waters are making huge losses, since jetties and piers in major ports have become muddy, as water levels recede, she adds.

Ngilu said this in Nairobi as she officiated the signing of an accord on how best the countries that share the Nile waters will use it without conflict. The countries with which Ngilu was negotiating are, Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Dr Congo and Ethiopia.

She said African water bodies, Lake Victoria among them, are drying up due to environmental degradation, hence spelling doom for global water transport systems.

Ngilu’s salvo comes in the wake of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report warning of the same. The report states that loss of at least 75 per cent of wetlands, which form Lake Victoria’s water catchments, has contributed to the receding shoreline.

The marine superintendent for Kenya Railways, Vitalis Leo, says that ships get stuck in the mud for several hours, as they try to dock, and that the captains have to manoeuver to avoid hitting rocks exposed by receding water levels. As a result, Kisumu, Lake Victoria’s busiest port, has lost major revenue, as the turn-around between Kisumu, Mwanza in Tanzania, and Port Bell in Uganda has reduced, because ships take long to dock.

A number of ships using the Kisumu jetty have, on several occasions, been stuck in the muddy and shallow waters, as they try to dock. Exposed rocks are a constant danger.

Bleak future

This has forced some private steamers and oil ferries to avoid Kisumu, resulting in the loss of millions of shillings in business.

Leo says the future of the port looks bleak, unless the situation improves. He says the water level at the has shrunk by almost two metres.

But the shrinking levels are best demonstrated in beaches around Nyakach in Nyando District, Rachuonyo, Uyoma in Bondo and Mbita.

Ngilu says Lake Victoria has been mapped alongside Lake Songor of Ghana, which also is recording rapid shrinking.

The UNEP report warns that the crisis facing the Lake is real and might equal the disastrous 90 per cent shrink of the once giant Lake Chad.

A Tanzanian hydrologist, Raymond Mngodo, says the Lake recorded the lowest water level in 1923 before the 1961 floods that sent the water levels rising by 2 meters.

Courtesy of;http://www.eastandard.net/print.php?