Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the Western

Area of Sierra Leone in the face of Rapid Urbanization

By: Ing. Alimamy Kolipha Kamara
Background
As the world celebrates World Water Day today, it is important for us in Sierra Leone to reflect on
those activities which may have adverse impact on this life sustaining resource. Despite being a
public worker, I wrote this piece as my personal view on a very important issue confronting our
beloved country, and that is the issue of environmental protection for sustainable water and
sanitation.

I am literally switching audience as any conscious ordinary patriotic Sierra Leonean could do. Yet, I
am writing with a cautious mind, determined to, as I have always been doing as a professional,
point out facts on important issues. But this time, I intend to share with fellow citizens, my
viewpoint on the critical nature of the situation surrounding our environment, but with specific
attention to water supply and sanitation in the Western Area where 21% of the population lives. If I
could attempt to lay the point bare and direct, we, as a people who called ourselves a nation of
Sierra Leone, are bent on destroying our very living condition by way of our careless deeds, and
failure to enforce or institute regulations that protect the environment. This is also the case in some
parts of the provinces. I know I may be misconstrued by cynics who I consider to be nothing but
blind and lost or even unpatriotic. I really do not care much about them. I sincerely care about the
future of my two little children and all other children of this country to whom we shall be leaving
this land. A wise one once said: We do not inherit this land from our forefathers; we have
borrowed it from our children. We therefore owe it to them and our conscience to protect it from
destruction.

Sierra Leone is a nation that has everything but still lacks everything. I say this because of the
common understanding that if you have everything but lack the consciousness to protect and utilize
it well, then you lack the most important thing. Let us now go to the background of the issue in
details.

At the start of the 21st century, the world gathered at the UN millennium summit to respond to the
worlds major challenges as they appeared by the year 2000. By that same period, Sierra Leone was
reaching the climax of a decade-long bloody civil war that had brought every facet of its social and
economic gains to complete wreckage. The war had destabilized the demographics and displaced
hundreds of thousands of people from rural to urban centres. As the social recovery plan
(Commission for Reconstruction, Resettlement and Rehabilitation) did not appear to be adequately
implemented, thousands of displaced people remain settled on the fringes, slums, and hills
overlooking the city of Freetown. This is a city that was starting to grapple with the burden of
delivering basic services to its inhabitants. The question of whether this once beautiful city, which
sits on the edge of an iconic forest-covered mountain-belt with enormous water resource potential,
would survive or cope with the increasing demand of its limited facilities, began to loom. The
answer was to be drawn from what kind of plans were there to prevent potential damages and

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maximize the delivery of basic services. Water supply and environmental sanitation sustainability
was subsequently about to start facing severe threat. With the start of the MDG at hand just when
the war ended, it appeared that the country was going to have to take a sudden and coincidental
transition from destruction to reconstruction. The development of an effective national strategic
plan to achieve these goals and in the process protect the environment and water resources of the
Western Area for example, was what anyone could expect to have seen in the year 2000. The
situation of water supply and environmental sanitation of Freetown and its environs 15 years later
shows the kind of effort that was made in that direction which I guess you will agree with me, is
nothing good to write home about.

There has been an indiscriminate deforestation of the Western Area Peninsular Forest for housing
construction which has led to the destruction of watersheds. The visible consequences have been
shortage of water supply to Freetown and flooding. The presence of the many environmental
management sector agencies complicates comprehension about why and how we got to this
situation. With urbanization seeming to be an unstoppable occurrence in Sierra Leone due to many
social reasons, the need for a robust approach in dealing with the imminent problem of water and
sanitation in the capital city and the rapidly developing communities around the Rural Western
Area is overdue.

Today, much more ambitious Goals, The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are at hand. Goal 6
which seeks to ensure availability and sustainable water and sanitation for all by 2030 is the goal of
interest here. The question this article wishes to throw light on is whether Sierra Leone is getting
the plan right to achieve sustainable water supply and environmental sanitation specifically for its
capital city of Freetown and the rest of the Western Area amid the rapid and somewhat unplanned
settlements development from its hills to its slums. I will focus this article on the following
questions:

i. How important is water supply and environmental sanitation to socio-economic

development?
ii. What is the current situation and problems surrounding water, sanitation and
environmental sustainability in Western Area in particular and in the country in general?
iii. What are the potential risks if we fail to take decisive action now?
iv. What can we do to address the situation?

How important is water supply and environmental sanitation to socio-economic

development
Probably since creation, the world has known that water is life and quality of life improves with
better sanitation. The nexus of improved access to safe drinking water and sanitation and the socio-
economic development of a nation is abutted by a thin line. This hypothesis is vindicated by the
conclusion of Fogden (2009) in her study of Access to safe drinking water and its impact to global
economic growth, where she further concluded that the lack of access to water is likely to impinge
on world economic development by 2050 with emerging economies becoming the worst victims.
The foregoing underscores why emerging economies like Sierra Leone must carefully plan to

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sustainably address water and sanitation issue if it wants to achieve sustainable socio-economic
growth.

Water and Sanitation are two bed fellows. A decline in one can affect improvement on the other.
The importance of safe drinking water and improved sanitation to healthy living and socio-
economic development of a nation cannot be over emphasized. Poor environmental sanitation
creates opportunity for diseases causing organisms like virus and bacteria to persist in the
environment and infect humans mostly through food and water. It is also a risk to water sources
contamination. Limited access to adequate and safe drinking water is a potential cause for
incidences of water-related diseases like diarrhoea, skin and respiratory conditions, blood and
nervous disorders, and mental impairment. The UN reported in 2013 that water related diseases
account for 80% of illnesses and death in the developing world. This statistics cannot be
unrepresentative of the case of Sierra Leone with an abysmally low MDG result (13%) on access to
improved sanitation. It is without doubt that high morbidity rate takes a heavy toll on the Disability
Affected Life Years (DALY) of citizens of a nation and also contributes to low productivity and life
expectancy. It could thus be reasonable to conclude that sustainable access to water and sanitation
positively impacts the per capita income, reduces poverty, and triggers an overall increase in the
living standard of a nation.

Current situation
Without wasting any time, I will confidently describe the situation as critical. Western Area
accounts for over 20% of the countrys population and is subsequently the most densely populated
region in the country. This figure is likely to rise at a much faster rate with the emergence of rapidly
developing communities along the Freetown to Waterloo highway, on the hill side and slum areas
of the city. Freetown is currently a city with less than 65% of pipe borne water supply coverage
with many areas especially in the East End going without a drop in the depth of the dry season. This
was not the case two decades ago when every corner of the city enjoyed non-stop water supply, and
reservoirs overflowing for months. With potentially two consecutive years of declaration of
emergency water supply, it becomes certain that the situation may worsen in coming years unless
adequate response is made. Many factors are responsible for the deteriorating situation of water
supply in the city that in my view doesnt appear to be given serious attention. The most critical of
which is water catchment protection. Attention appears to be more focused on response than
mitigation of this critical problem. In the end, the problem will become complicated and
subsequently impossible or extremely expensive to solve than it could have been if timely and
decisive actions had been taken.

Freetown has about eight local water supply sources (Kongo, Sugar Loaf, Mamba Ridge, Thunder
Hill, Cemetery Blue Water, White Water, and Charlotte) that were developed to supply the city and
other areas which later became complementary sources to the great Guma dam as the population of
the city continues to rise. These water sources originate from the Western Area Peninsular Forest
which by common sense imagination should have long been declared a protected area for the
security of the water sources that sustains our livelihood downstream at a much cheaper and
affordable cost. Today, almost all of these once vibrant sources are at the brink of extinction as a
result of human activities that could have been prevented. Even the densely forested Guma

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catchment and reservoir, a natural endowment in the region, that provides water supply for
Freetown at less energy cost, is currently facing serious threat of deforestation. This situation is
gradually affecting the supply potential of this great source. This is unimaginable and poses a
serious question of what kind of people are we. In my candid view, it is the result of a complex
mixture of causes ranging from poor inter-agency coordination, no enforcement of regulations, to
the lack of strong interest and unrelenting effort by the responsible authorities to prevent
continued declination of the situation.

On the area of sanitation, a summary of the problem is the absence of an effective and sustainable
waste management system for the current Freetown situation. A city with virtually no semblance of
engineering application for upgrading or management of its sanitation systems is doom to slide into
a very messy situation spanning from contamination of water sources to entrenchment of
sanitation related diseases on a wide scale. In the developing areas in the Western Area (and even
in the three provincial cities) where there are massive ongoing constructions of houses, adequate
provision for wastewater or storm water drainage system is hardly made. It is the land owners who
determine where and how an access road must be directed (including the width and alignment).
These are in many cases done unprofessionally and without consideration for future utility service
lines and wastewater drainages. Down in the city, drainages are not only filled with sediments
eroded from the destructed hills over the city, but are further clogged with wastewater and solid
wastes disposed of into them by residents. There are evidences of faecal sludge from pit latrines
emptied into primary drainages or buried into the ground. These happenings simply point to the
fact that there are either no regulations on household solid and liquid waste management or they
are not enforced. There is little scope on this piece to cavil on the reckless manner in which primary
drainages, brooks, riparian buffer zones, estuaries, and swamplands are being constricted or
engulfed with embankments, retaining walls, and slabs for housing construction even within the
city centre not to mention slums and other remote areas. Instead of expanding on primary
drainages to contain the increased run-off resulting from deforestation and pavement area
enlargement, we build houses on and over them yet we wonder why we battle with flooding in
many parts of the city virtually on an annual basis. The condition of Freetowns solid waste
dumpsites and the activities within them are very pathetic to imagine for a city in the twenty-first
century. All these are happening in the faces of the numerous sector agencies and operatives in the
country such as EPA, Freetown City Council, Ministry of Health and Sanitation, ONS, Ministry of
Lands, housing and country Planning, parliamentarians, and civil society groups. What plans are
there and who is responsible for implementing what aspect is not clearly known.

Potential risks if decisive action is not taken

Already there are many environmentally related problems confronting residents of the Western
Region. Below is a summary of imminent problems, some of which will be very severe unless the
right decisions are taken.
1. Deforestation of the Western Area Peninsular Forest will lead to water sources extinction and
exacerbate climate change and environmental effects such as temperature extremes, flooding,
landslides and sloop failures.

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2. There may be heightened water shortages in the Western Area due to source depletion amidst
rising demand. The Guma, Kongo, and Sugar Loaf catchments in the Western Area are critical in
this case.
3. More expensive water supply projects may be required to meet future demand. These include
source availability (of which seawater desalination may become necessary), acquisition of
pipeline access, and strategic location for reservoir construction.
4. Water related diseases may persist in communities with inadequate access to improved
sanitation and safe drinking water.
5. Uncontrolled development on protected areas such as slopes, water course, drainages,
wetlands and riparian buffer zones will result to environmental damage and climate change
impacts.
6. The socio-economic impacts of inadequate access to water and sanitation will loom harder.
These include the effect on education, high DALY, low life expectancy, low economic growth
due to investor dissatisfaction, to mention but a few.

Some recommendations that can be implemented to address the situation

i. It should all start by Sierra Leoneans developing the consciousness that this is a problem we
have created that no one else, not even our bilateral friends or donors can solve if we are
not committed to do what must be done. If I could borrow from the words of President
Barrack Obama, The future of Africa is up to Africans. We must go back to the drawing
board with a spirit of patriotism to do the right things such as enforcing regulations and do
things more professionally and patriotically in the interest of the generation yet unborn.
ii. There should be an immediate physical delimitation of a green zone in the Western Area
Peninsular Forest and enforcement of its protection as a national reserve. This call has been
on the spotlight for a very long time but what is preventing the enforcement is still not
understood. A genuine political will is the first thing I believe is required to achieve this
goal.
iii. Government should establish an agency to be responsible for Integrated Infrastructure and
Built Environment Development Planning. This agency will undertake the regions land use
planning with environmental protection being one of its focuses. It will also undertake
policy development, review and enforcement of standards and guidelines on areas such as
land survey and housing construction. For instance, a minimum access road width of 10m,
adequate drainage planning in developing communities must be done before construction
approval is given. This agency must be well equipped with highly motivated professionals.
iv. Government should establish an agency to be responsible for water resources management.
It is understood that the Ministry of Water Resources is working towards this and a bill for
its establishment is in the process of enactment.
v. The solid waste management system needs to be reviewed to a more effective one that
applies feasible strategies for storage, collection, transportation, treatment and
disposal/end-use process. This will obviously include a review of the location of the
Freetown solid waste landfill sites and development of engineered landfill sites at strategic
locations.

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 vi. Ensuring access to water and sanitation for all by 2030 requires investing in adequate
infrastructure and providing adaptable sanitation systems. Development of a Water Supply
and sanitation plan for the Western Area is urgently required. This can be done by
undertaking a detailed engineering study that produces a Master Plan of water and
sanitation for the entire Western Area.

In conclusion, despite the severity of the level of damage that has been done, it is still possible to
repair and prevent further damage by simply directing the necessary attention to this hanging
disaster before it gets too late.

Author

Ing. Alimamy Kolipha Kamara

Published on Awoko and Africa Young Voices (AYV) Newspapers, Freetown Wednesday 22nd March 2017 edition