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The team on an outreach programme have uncovered some developments on the buffer zone of the headworks, which has a high propensity to environmentally destroy the dam at the intake point, if allowed to stand.
The development in the buffer zone is an upshot to the challenges bedeviling the Company with frequent breakdown of its pumping machine – an old remaining machine, existing out of three at the headworks, which was installed in 1993. The existing challenge was denying Ho and its adjoining environs of the resource, and the destruction of the intake point could be far-fetched for the large clienteles in the value-chain and could jeopardize service delivery.
BSK City, the private developer, who is said to own that part of land including the buffer zone has undertaken some grading activity on the hill by the banks of the intake of the Plant and ended up filling part of the intake with the removed topsoil from the hill. In an environmental assessment impact situation response, Mr Francis Lamptey, Volta Regional Chief Manager of the GWCL, disclosed to the Ghana News Agency that the immediate effect of that action of the developer was the reduction of the volume of water at the intake, in
He said whenever it rained, because there was no vegetative cover, the runoff from the bare soil would cause a massive siltation at the intake and elevate turbidity beyond treatability. “When this happens, the Treatment Plant will have to shut down as it is not equipped with coagulant dosing system nor clarifiers or sedimentation tanks to treat highly turbid water.”
Mr Lamptey said any development for Resort purposes or human settlement close to the intake would result in pollution of the water at the intake as waste from the Resort or settlements could be released directly into the intake leading to very dire consequences. He said the Company was requesting the National and Regional Security Councils to prohibit the private developer from any further adverse activities and to force the developer to plant grass to cover the area already graded to prevent siltation of the intake and elevation of turbidity from runoffs when it rained.
The GWCL by communication has notified other stakeholders of the development including the Environmental Protection Agency, Water Resources Commission, Regional House of Chiefs, and the South Dayi Assembly. Mr. Lamptey said the Company detected the development, when a team of officials from the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) from Accra and the Volta Region visited the GWCL office on January 21, 2025, to discuss the water situation in Ho vis-a-vis, the challenges with the intake pumps at the Plant.
He said as part of the fact-finding mission of the PURC, they visited the Kpeve Treatment Plant to discover the activities of the developer. Meanwhile, GNA’s effort to elicit explanations from the private developer has yielded no responses as phone calls and text messages to the contact of the CEO of BSK remained unanswered.
Source: GNA
