Date Posted: 11/21/2013 6:53:14 AM
Posted By: wishstar Membership Level: Gold Total Points: 7507
Water is an important resource to the well being of humans. It serves many purposes and without it, existence would cease. Despite it being an important resource, water harnessing has not been taken seriously. In times of floods, roads are submerged in waters, houses are flooded and a lot of catastrophes are brought by the same. In direct contrast, during the dry periods, famine and hunger are experienced. This would not have been the case had the water been harnessed. Since Kenya mainly depends on agriculture, it being the backbone of the economy, water is an important resource. Lack of it may cause food shortage as a result of crops not doing well in the farms. Some households have done well in harvesting mainly rain water. They then, mostly, channel this water to storage tanks to be used in the future. We cannot only talk about water harvesting but also look into how water is being wasted. For instance, Mombasa has reported losing twenty three million liters of water a day. Most of this water is lost through burst pipes and leaks. They blamed this loss to pipes which were installed 50 years ago. Its a shame that the government didn't take this issue seriously until 800 million was donated by the Dutch government to solve the problem. You can imagine that if this amount of water is lost in Mombasa alone, even if we consider most to be due to leakages, how much do you think is lost due to the various leaking taps in the country?In fact, some taps have faults and thus spew water "mercilessly" with no one caring. In the arid and semi arid lands of Kenya, we see people dying of hunger due to the dry spells that are usually there. Crops can't survive or do well, at least most of them, due to scarcity of water. When it rains in these areas, people are not that much concerned about harvesting the water for future use. They don't at all see that the dry spell will come again. When such water is harvested, it can be used for irrigation and as well as other basic uses of water like drinking, bathing and washing of clothes. The main point, however, is to harvest it in order for it to be used for food production. The government had started a project in building of water reservoirs but this project was not completed as a result of corruption. It is high time that the government takes such issues seriously and ensure that projects are fully completed. In this sense, water dams should be constructed in water scarce areas in order to store rain water during rainy seasons to be utilized during the dry seasons. Planting of trees is also a good initiative in the generation and conservation of water. A while back, the then minister for agriculture, William Ruto, rolled out an initiative for people to plant trees in at least ten percent of their land. However, the idea was not fully implemented and now its as long forgotten. You as a individual can revive this initiative and ensure that if you own a piece of land, then you plant trees to cover at least a tenth of the portion of your land. On an individual basis, you can also use gutters to collect rain water from your roof and store it in tanks for future use. Don't let the water go to waste as someone somewhere else is in dire need of it. We all know that water is a necessity in life. It improves the quality of life. We should thus conserve it in whatever way possible.
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