Filthy Kenyan river threatens thriving capital
Lawmakers pledge to clean waterway, but have done little
NAIROBI, Kenya — Vultures scavenge for dead animals along a river turned sewer conduit in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi. Its waters turn from clear to black as it traverses informal settlements and industrial hubs.
The river and its tributaries cross Kibera, known as Africa’s largest slum with close to 200,000 residents. It skirts dozens of factories that manufacture textiles, liquor and building materials. Many have been accused by environmentalists of discharging raw sewage and other pollutants into the water.
Now the new national government, installed after last August’s election, says it’s on a mission to clean up the Nairobi River. Nairobi is one of Africa’s fastest growing cities and is struggling to balance the needs of creating jobs and protecting the environment from pollution.
The government has formed a commission whose mandate is to clean up and restore the river basin. No deadline has been announced yet, and there is no budget. The commission has yet to meet.
Experts and locals alike fear the water is harming plants in nearby farms that feed residents. Some community-based organizations help clean up the river. But families in the rapidly growing downstream suburb of Athi River, some 19 miles away, say they can no longer rely on the water for basic needs.
Anne Nduta, 25, uses the river’s dark waters to wash her babies’ clothes by hand.
“When it rains, the Athi River water is usually full of garbage, and when it clears a bit we use it to wash clothes,” said the mother of two. “But as the dry season continues,
the water becomes darker in color and we have to start buying expensive borehole water.”
A 5-gallon jerrican of borehole water sells for $0.16, and Nduta would need four of them to wash her babies’ clothes every three days.
Nduta’s problems start upstream, where informal settlements have directed some sewer lines into the Nairobi River.
Ecologist Stephen Obiero said that sewage in the river used to irrigate farmland can cause “the possibility of contamination of the plant products with bacteria, viruses, protozoa ... if not properly handled by the end users.”
Morris Mutunga grows kale, spinach and amaranth on his 5-acre farm in the Athi River area but has watched crops like French beans wither when irrigated with water that comes from the river.
“I wish those polluting
this river upstream in Nairobi could stop for the sake of food security in our country,” he said. The region is the source of many vegetables sold in Nairobi markets.
Upstream, some residents of informal settlements, like 36-year-old Violet Ahuga, a mother of four in Korogocho, cannot afford to pay to use modern toilets, so they defecate in bags and throw them in the river. The slum has more than 35,000 adults, according to the 2019 national census.
Most informal settlements, which house laborers and their families, are not connected to sewer lines and have open trenches where residents pour dirty water that flows into the river.
But Ahuga also relies on the river’s water for her daily income. She uses it to wash plastic bags, which she sells to traders who make reusable baskets with them. As she splashes the black water on the bags and scrubs them with her feet, she remembers
fondly how as a child she used to swim here.
The National Environment Management Authority, which is responsible for managing the river’s water quality standards and issuing discharge licenses, has been accused by some Kenyan parliament members of laxity that has let industries get away with polluting the river.
Those industries include paint manufacturers, dairy factories, solar or lead acid batteries producers among others. Some industries have been closed down for discharging raw sewage into the river.
Heavy metals like lead, barium, iron, aluminum, zinc and copper, among others, have been found in high levels at different sampling points along the river by various research organizations, including the University of Nairobi’s public health and toxicology department.
Alex Okaru, a public
health expert at the University of Nairobi, said high levels of heavy metals in the water — particularly lead and barium — could cause health effects such as liver and kidney damage if consumed.
In a parliament committee hearing in 2021, NEMA was accused of not taking action against a distillery that residents said was releasing waste in the Athi River area.
NEMA boss David Ongare acknowledged that few entities are being prosecuted these days but said that’s because the government has been changing its approach to encourage collaboration instead of being combative, which could lead to resistance.
He said that since the changes were introduced, businesses are coming forward asking for assistance to comply with the body’s directives.
“The cost of noncompliance is becoming very costly because if your enterprise is shut down, by the time you come back to production, you’ve lost customers and your market share,” Ongare said.
He asserted that the environmental body has been constantly monitoring companies with past noncompliance issues and said if any are playing games it would soon catch up with them and action would be taken.
The environmental body also said it acts on all incidents of pollution that are reported by whistleblowers.
Locals and community organizations say another approach to cleaning up the river would be providing modern toilets at little or no cost. The NEMA boss said he hopes the national government’s program to build affordable housing will reduce the number of people living in areas without good sanitation.
In Kibera, a communitybased organization called Mazingira Yetu, Swahili for Our Environment, is trying to address the problem by building 19 modern toilet blocks in collaboration with a government agency, Athi Water.
The organization’s cofounder, Sam Dindi, said they also wanted to prevent plastic and other waste from being dumped in the river.
“The waste is collected and sorted into plastic waste, which is sold to recyclers or upcycled into baskets, and organic waste, which is transformed into compost manure,” Dindi said.
The manure is sold to people who have gardens, and some is used to grow tree seedlings that the organization sells. Money generated from Mazingira Yetu projects is distributed to the youth who work with the organization.
“The idea of introducing a circular economy has worked here,” he said, referring to the group’s smallscale but successful reuse of waste products. “It just needs to be replicated.”