THE costs of building dams are quite suffocating for every nation or stakeholder. The figures are sufficiently scary and prohibitive.
By Peter Makwanya
The inept handling of dam reservoirs or capability of dams to withstand external forces like floods would be witnessed when the accidents finally occur.
With the rainy season now upon us and the likelihood of floods appearing imminent, how safe are our national reservoirs?
There is a worrying trend in this country, that after a few rains have pounded our landscapes, our dams become full overnight and the media, not to be outdone, and in no time at all, publicise new dam capacities in percentage forms.
The majority of dams always range from over 55% to 75% in no time at all, but would that be real?
When the rains subside, the dam’s full capacities go down tremendously, and at the same time, we witness water scarcities once again.
Yes, it’s always good to keep people conscientised about the state of their dams in upholding their livelihoods.
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But this conscientisation needs to be sustainable and able to empower people in every manner possible.
If the rains persist, these dams will end up bursting or collapsing.
While I may not be very particular about the intricate mechanical and technological procedures required to certify dams as usable, I am, however, not short of knowledge regarding the communicative aspects of project identification, implementation and evaluation.
Many seasoned engineers and technological practitioners avoid to tackle communication in project management, they think this branch is not useful and it’s, therefore, a waste of time and resources.
But the truth of the matter is technical people have communication problems.
The communicative concerns are significant in the sense that they help to address issues regarding the safety and disaster management of dams in any given country, whether they are intact or in shambles.
In this regard, emergency action plans or disaster management plans need to be always in place and this should also include maintenance work, that is, if ever they are carried out.
Ongoing maintenance work will help to communicate certain defects and deficiencies on various dams, so that appropriate remedial measures are instituted in time.
In this regard, heavily silted dams are not safe at all, they are not sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Also, how much funds are available to deal with issues of siltation and contamination.
Although siltation is unavoidable, it can be controlled and managed.
To manage siltation issues, the country’s legislation on environmental flows should be strengthened An environmental flow is described as the quantity, quality and timing of water flows required to sustain freshwater and estuarine ecosystems (Gillespie, 2014).
Many regions in our country, in no time, end up crying because of water shortages, not because there will be water scarcities, but because of the shortage of water storage capacities.
Despite the issues of water storage capacity, surface dams have problems of evaporation, pollution, sedimentation and siltation.
As development countries, we have problems of coming up with underground dams, which are more sustainable.
In developing countries, despite maintenance problems being inherent, we lack adequate funding to carry out structural or repair work.
Overall, we still have activities that heathen pollution and siltation activities going on in rivers and down streams leading into the dams.
Overlooking the above factors would lead to the country witnessing floods, displacing people, killing people, impoverishing them, as well as causing damages to infrastructure.
Peter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his capacity and can be contacted on: [email protected]
