Owabi, Barekese dams under threat

The Ashanti Regional Security Council has reiterated that the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL’s) water treatment dams at Owabi and Barekese remain security zones and will deal ruthlessly with anyone who encroaches on lands belonging to the plants.

The Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Simon Osei-Mensah, gave the warning in Kumasi following a tour of the facilities in the company of officials of the GWCL and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Works and Housing.

He also urged the GWCL to initiate legal action against developers who encroached on the buffer zones of the water treatment dams.

Effects of encroachment

Mr Osei-Mensah said the dams which supplied water to Kumasi and its environs had come under serious trespass lately by encroachers, thereby threatening the survival of the dams.

"The council is poised to fight encroachers, especially, sand winners.

“In fact, people have encroached so close to the dams such that if we don’t demolish houses in the areas now it will be difficult to do so in the future,” he said.

According to the regional minister, the depth of water in the Owabi Dam had reduced from 22.5 feet to 6.5 feet due to indiscriminate activities in the area.

He said because of the acts of thoughtlessness on the part of estate developers, there was always flooding in the various towns in the dams’ vicinity due to the lack of adequate drainage systems in the communities.

Pragmatic measures

The Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee, Mr John Nana Amoako, who is also the Member of Parliament for Upper Denkyira East, asked GWCL to put in place realistic measures to protect the remaining area around the water bodies before they also get occupied.

He said with the rate at which lands in the dams’ buffer zones were being taken up, Kumasi and its environs could face serious water shortage in future if care was not taken.

Nana Amoako said it was high time the GWCL and the regional security council got serious and strict with encroachers, while calling also for the dams to be efficiently maintained to ensure uninterrupted water supply.

Persistent problem

Activities of illegal miners and other encroachers within the Barekese and Owabi Dam catchment areas are causing the two facilities to produce below capacity.

Last October 11, the Executive Secretary of the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC), Mrs Mami Dufie Ofori, cautioned that very soon Ghana might have to import water to satisfy her people if the rate at which people were encroaching and destroying the nation’s water bodies was not checked.

Mrs Ofori was expressing her surprise at the level of encroachment in the buffer zones of the Barekese and Owabi dams in the Ashanti Region when she paid a working visit to the facilities.

She said it was time for the citizens to resist private estate developers whose activities were posing a threat to all.

The two dams are the largest sources of drinking water for residents in the Kumasi metropolis and neighbouring districts.

The Owabi Dam was constructed in 1928 and was designed to produce three million gallons of water a day, but now produces two million gallons a day to supplement water from the Barekese Dam, which began operations in 1969 and produces 21 million gallons of water daily, representing about 80 per cent of the water needs of the city of Kumasi and its environs.