More than 60 per cent of Ghana’s water bodies are polluted by illegal mining.
That figure, stated this week by a research scientist at the Groundwater Division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - Water Research Institute, Dr Franklin Obiri-Nyarko, should shock every Ghanaian into action. (See our front page lead story).
So, the question: “Can Ghana heal her water?” goes beyond science. It is a question of survival.
You do not need a laboratory to see the crisis.
Drive across the Pra, Ankobra, Birim, Offin and Densu.
What used to be clear, flowing water is now brown, thick with silt and heavy metals.
The Ghana Water Company has repeatedly shut down treatment plants at Daboase, Kyebi and elsewhere because turbidity is too high to treat.
Pollution at this scale is not just environmental. It is health.
It is food.
It is jobs. When mercury, cyanide, arsenic, and fuel residues enter rivers, they end up in our crops, our fish and our bodies.
The long-term effects — kidney failure, cancers, congenital disabilities, neurological damage — will be with us for decades, even if we stop galamsey tomorrow.
Healing will require active, sustained restoration.
For years, the national debate has centred on stopping galamsey.
Stop it, yes. But the scientist reminds us that the rivers are already poisoned.
Contaminants have settled in riverbeds, floodplains and groundwater.
Even if excavators are removed today, the heavy metals remain.
They will continue to leach, especially during rains.
Natural dilution will not work.
Sustainable restoration requires tackling the source of contamination, removing the contaminants already present and treating the rivers themselves.
That is complex, expensive and time-consuming. It requires dredging of contaminated sediments under controlled conditions, bioremediation using plants and microbes that absorb heavy metals, stabilisation of riverbanks, replanting of buffer zones and continuous water quality monitoring.
It cannot be done with task forces and press conferences.
The Water Resources Commission Act, Minerals and Mining Act, Environmental Protection Act, and institutions exist.
But enforcement has been weak, inconsistent and in some cases, compromised.
Galamsey thrives because of poverty, yes, but also because of greed, political protection and a breakdown of community surveillance.
Chiefs, assembly members, and security officers who should protect rivers look on or profit from them.
The result: 60 per cent polluted.
In a country that aspires to be food self-sufficient and water-secure, that is a national security threat.
The CSIR-WRI 30th anniversary theme — water-environment-food-health nexus — points to the solution.
We cannot treat water in isolation.
We must enforce without fear or favour.
The law must bite both the young man in the pit and the financier behind him.
The government must create a Water Restoration Fund, financed by a percentage of mineral royalties, environmental levies and fines from galamsey prosecutions.
The Minerals Income Investment Fund has just posted GH¢1.1 billion profit in 2025 and GH¢5.39 billion in royalties in half a year.
Part of that wealth must go to healing the water the mining destroyed.
We must adopt science-led remediation.
The CSIR-WRI, universities and the Ghana Hydrological Authority have the knowledge.
Use constructed wetlands, phytoremediation with local plants and community-based monitoring.
Every polluted river needs a specific restoration plan, not a one-size-fits-all dredging contract. We must make water quality public.
Publish monthly turbidity and heavy metal levels of major rivers.
When citizens can see the data, pressure for action grows.
Can Ghana heal her water? Yes, but only if we want to. Other countries have done it.
The Rhine in Europe was declared biologically dead in the 1970s.
Through investment and strict enforcement, it now supports life.
Our rivers can also recover, but it will take 10 to 20 years of consistent work.
The three-day mid-year review at the CSIR-WRI is a reminder that Ghana has the scientists.
What is lacking is political will and sustainable funding.
The answer lies not in the laboratory, but in our conscience.
If we continue to watch 60 per cent rise to 80 per cent, we are writing a death warrant for our children.
If we invest now, we can leave them rivers that are drinkable, fishable and farmable.
Water is life. No cocoa profit, no gold revenue, no election victory is worth poisoned water.
The time for half measures is over.
The damage is already done.
Restoration must begin now, with dedicated funding, honest enforcement, and science at the centre.
Let this 60 per cent figure be the line we never cross again, but the point from which we begin to heal.
