Kampala — Kampala is sitting on a sewerage system that has not expanded in over 40 years and now threatens to dangerously pollute Lake Victoria, a key source of the city's water supply, according to the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NW&SC).

According to NW&SC, Kampala is one large open sewer that has turned Nakivubo channel - originally intended to help drain rain and flood water out of the city - into a carrier of waste and industrial effluent emissions into the lake.

Only eight per cent of the city has access to the sewerage lines, and a functional sewerage system exists mainly within the old and settled residential areas so when the rest of the city flushes, it does so directly into the lake. Most of Kampala's residents do not have access to a flush toilet.

"High rises in places like Wandegeya where hostels have come up do not have a sewage system," says Dr William Muhairwe who runs NW&SC. "Their waste is dumped directly into the Nakivubo channel which carries it to the lake."

In the last four years, NW&SC has tried to move its water pumping stations further away from Tank Hill which gets water from the neighbourhood that the channel pollutes, but this remains Kampala's main source of water.

"Our growth has outstripped the capacity to provide these services. While traditional treatment of sewage has been organic, the pollution from industries which have complex chemicals cannot be handled by our facilities," Mr Muhairwe said, adding that both water generating and sewerage infrastructure is overstretched.

In towns like Bwaise and other densely-settled areas of the city, the lack of flush toilets means that in the rainy season residents empty pit latrines into pools of water which is then sucked into the channel. "Going to the toilet in Bwaise is a daily exercise of improvisation by local residents," a manager at NW&SC told Daily Monitor.

Sometimes the water sources are so polluted that human waste show up in the community stand pipes and taps and into drinking water, managers say. Contamination of water by human waste is a constant challenge as are water diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery and even polio and meningitis which are water-borne and cost several millions of shillings to treat each year.

According to Dr Muhairwe, chronic underinvestment in water infrastructure has come to haunt Kampala which has grown from a city of a few thousands to close to two million residents.

According to one United Nations Human Settlements report, four out of 10 city residents, approximately 430,000 people, live in unplanned and under-serviced slums around Kampala, while less than six out of 10 Kampalans have access to clean water.

The situation is not any better in many of the 22 towns that are covered by NW&SC.

According to Dr Steven Nyanzi, the head of Chemistry Department at Makerere University, the pressure to access water, which leads to thefts and disruptions along the network, makes it difficult to detect and respond to water contamination. In other words if there is a crisis - like a poisonous leak from one of the industries along the Nakivubo channel for example - it would be difficult to contain it.

Also the pollution of the Lake poses more serious problems and could mean that the water "dies" and can longer be healthy for human consumption.

Early this year, State Minister for Water Jennifer Namuyangu caused a stir when she revealed that a stinking mass of green algae covering Ggaba, Luzira and Munyonyo bays on Lake Victoria was a result of pollution from the Nakivubo channel.

At a meeting of Uganda's water managers a week and a half ago, experts said the poor management of the resource will cause severe shortages due to Uganda's growing population and economy.

Dr Callist Tindimugaya, the head of the water regulation section at the Directorate for Water Development, said even if Uganda is water rich, its resources are so unevenly distributed that shortages are inevitable.

Access to clean water is a constitutional right in Uganda but the resource is often taken for granted, a pattern that has followed other public assets down the drain to disaster.

In 2003, the red flag went up over the record drop in power production, largely due to a fall in the water levels on Lake Victoria, throwing policy makers into a panic. Uganda's power sector is yet to fully recover, despite government spending millions of dollars each year on emergency thermal power generators and investing into a joint venture for the construction of Bujagali hydropower dam.

With donors still providing up to 40 per cent of the country's budget, there is often inadequate government investment in the water sector with 80 per cent of the money available coming from donors, according to Dr Muhairwe.

The lack of sufficient investment has made it next to impossible to match the growth of the population (many of whom are attracted to urban areas in search for employment) and increased economic activities which are already applying pressure on water.

The Master Plan for expanding the city's water services requires approximately 60 million Euros. Uganda is negotiating a 38 million Euro loan with the African Development Bank and has drawn plans for three small-scale sewage treatment facilities to help relieve the situation. The new planned sub-systems (or booster stations) supplying suburbs will be at Nakivubo and Kinawataka.

Kampala, which has only four sub-systems to boost its primary water stations of Tank Hill and Rubaga, needs nine such systems but planning for expansion, says Mr Muhairwe, is a chicken-and-egg situation.

"With limited resources we have to ask; do we expand infrastructure say where there are no settlements or wait for situations like Wandegeya where evidence of settlements demand that we make the investment?" he asks. Under the Uganda Poverty Eradication Action Plan, the government has a set a deadline of 2015 to provide access to safe drinking water.

However, unless there is an infusion of local funding the situation will remain fluid for the foreseeable future. Number crunchers at NW&SC say it would take 100 years for them to generate enough revenue to finance their 20-year projections. That is a long time to wait for eggs to hatch into chicks, let alone clean water.