John laing, mass media and misisi areas

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5.1The WHO – funded Project

Among the few initiatives taken by Government to tackle the problem of aquifer impairment in terms of both quality and quantity is the Central Board of Health (CBoH)-supported project, which is funded by the WHO. This project is also intended to investigate sanitation practices, water quality issues and morbidity and mortality problems in the Chawama-Misisi and John Laing areas arising from water quality problems.

5.2the unesco – unep sponsered project

Still pursuant to Zambia’s policy to reduce the incidence of poverty and improve the well being of its people, there has been growing need to appraise the country’s existing groundwater resources in terms of quantity and quality. The possibility to undertake this appraisal on a larger scale in the city of Lusaka manifested itself when this project – Assessment of pollution Status and Vulnerability of Water Supply Aquifers of African cities – was muted under the sponsorship of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS – Habitat) and supported by the Government of the Republic of Zambia.

The project has been initiated to promote a proactive strategy in the understanding of causes, establish trends and preventative measures for the perennial epidemics experienced in the city through output driven monitoring of groundwater resources and production of early warning bulletins.

5.3project Objectives

The broad objective of this project is to determine and quantify levels of groundwater contamination and promote efficient, integrated and sustainable utilisation and management of this resource, thereby improving the living conditions of the city population as a whole, but especially the poor. Specific objectives include:

To assess the vulnerability of groundwater to pollution
To identify hotspots and major threats of groundwater contamination for the project areas in Lusaka.
To establish an Early Warning aquifer monitoring system for possible water supply contamination
To formulate a hydrogeological model of groundwater vulnerability for the project areas in Lusaka.

Fulfilment of these objectives has great potential of assisting the development and implementation of surveillance, preparedness and response systems to outbreaks of waterborne diseases in the city.

5.4Expected outputs

These will include production of:

Vulnerability maps
Early warning bulletins

These products are expected to influence policy options for better management of the city’s groundwater resources, in general, and the project areas, in particular, and help mitigate some of the waterborne health problems.

5.5execution Methodology

Components of the study involved:

Site selection and data collection
- Rigorous selection of the survey area
- Digitisation of the topographical map of the selected area
- Piezometric monitoring and data of areas identified
- Collection of existing data – hydrogeological data, hydrochemical data, isotopic data, data on type and location of potential contamination source, climatological data including long precipitation records, temperature, humidity, evaporation, hydrological data.
  1. Purchase and scanning of materials: air photos/satellite images
  2. Mapping of key pollution sources

Field surveys and mapping of monitoring of wells and boreholes.
Physical, chemical and bacteriological analysis (conductivity, pH, temperature, nitrate and nitrite, fluoride sulphate, chloride, faecal coliforms, total coliforms).
Mapping of pollutant sources.

Analyses, synthesis and presentation

5.6Selection of Project areas

In the selection of project areas, it was decided that these areas needed to:

Have a self-contained aquifer, where it would be possible to study source(s) of contamination.
Have a predominance of on site sanitation for the disposal of its excreta.
Be in a location, where contamination had been identified to be a problem (area lying directly over the aquifer).
Be where the quality of the aquifer water can be correlated with health status, and where health data can be monitored.
Be preferably in a location, where there were some water projects taking or had taken place so that there would be some data on which to build on.

Additionally, one of these areas needed to be one, where pollution may not have been so high and in which interventions could still be undertaken to redeem the aquifer.

Eventually, three areas (Fig. 23) responding to these criteria were selected and thus;

The Mass Media area, as one where pollution may not have been so high and in which interventions could still be undertaken to redeem the aquifer, and
Misisi and John Laing areas, where levels of pollution were assumed reasonably high due to the existing systems of onsite excreta disposal.

For piezometric measurements, it was decided that monitoring boreholes drilled by the Environmental Council of Zambia at the abandoned Libala dumpsite would be used.

Fig. 23: Locality map of the selected project areas in Lusaka

6Water quality assessment in the project areas

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