The sewage headache that won't go away

Asemblance of a waterfall whooshes downhill, renting the air with a musty smell. It flows with vigour on its way to a narrow stream-like channel which carries sewage water flowing all the way to Nairobi River. Upstream, there is a concrete structure meant for the sewer line that passes through Silanga area in Njiru Ward, Nairobi County.

Residents of Silanga and its environs trod on this dangerous footpath disguised as a footbridge daily because there is no other way to cross over to where most social amenities are. When the sewage water flows downstream, vegetables and fruits grown by residents flourish.

There are small partitioned farms where different vegetables, mostly indigenous ones like pumpkin leaves, cow peas (kunde), blacknight shade (managu) and amaranthus (mchicha) are grown. Other traditional foods like arrow roots and bananas are also grown here.

A woman has come for her matured pumpkin leaves when we visit the area. One pluck at a time, she puts them inside a small white sack that appears to have been stained with mud. On the left side, there are women weeding their section of the farm and a mature banana has just fallen off the stem nearby. The banana is ready for whoever will pick it to either take it home or to the market. As long as it stays where it is, sewage water will continue washing it.

We find Mama Wambui at her farm, where she has been planting vegetables. The ground is wet with sewage water but new seeds are spending their first day of germination beneath the soil, waiting to bloom like the other vegetables nearby.

“I have been living in Silanga for 32 years now. When I came here, we found this sewer line as it is. All these areas where you see house structures were previously people’s farms. Our source of water has always been this sewage,” she says.

“We have been planting here and eating the same vegetables for years. We also sell the vegetables in markets. I have never been sick because of eating vegetables grown near the sewage water. Had I been sick, even once, I would have stopped eating them” she adds.

Mama Wambui believes that the sewage water is actually a river, but she cannot tell the name of the river itself. She is unaware of the health danger it poses in her life and that of others who eat the vegetables unknowingly.

Esther Maina lives a few kilometres from the sewer line but adjacent to an area known for sewage outbursts when the blockage cannot sustain the pressure anymore. She is a mother to a six-year-old and a four-year-old.

About two months ago,  her sleep was interrupted at 3am by a choking stench and sewage water that had made its way into her house. She could not get help immediately because all her neighbours had suffered the same fate.

Residents of Obama Estate, which is on the right side of where she stays and some from Mwiki, on her left, are some of the people who came to her rescue.

“I had to move from my previous place to where I am now because of that night. My children were traumatised and even became sick. Despite moving, the sewage slug is still here and continues to affect us,” she tells Healthy Nation. Esther says her children keep going to the hospital because of the sewage menace.

“They mostly have diarrhoea and respiratory infections because their noses are blocked all the time. With the stagnant sewage water nearby, it has become a breeding ground for mosquitoes,” she narrates.

On that fateful night, letting the water flow cost one of Esther’s neighbour a house. Esther tells Healthy Nation that they had to break the walls and create a tunnel to allow water to flow downstream.

“To date, the walls are still dilapidated and no one compensated him for that,” she says.

Her children miss out on school work when the sewer line bursts.

“They stayed at  home with me for about two weeks and during this time, my husband could not go to work as well. I had a chicken rearing project and all my hatchlings died. Most of my chickens also died and some of my household stuff were destroyed by the sewage water,” she says.

Esther is not sure of the source of the vegetables that she buys, but unlike Mama Wambui, her stomach aches after consuming them. This makes her suspect that it could be one of the sewage-grown vegetables.

“The last time I was in hospital was just about two days ago. I still have my drugs with me since I have not completed my dosage. I am a candidate at Mama Lucy hospital because of my frequent visits there. If Mama Lucy Hospital were a human being, they’d probably be my sister because I go there all the time,” she says.

“We have no amenities nearby, we buy water, some of us have no electricity. We can’t dig pit latrines but just a shallow temporary hole that fills up quite fast. We feel like we're in the deepest part of the village disguised as city residents. Villagers are way better than us,” she explains.

Her neighbour, Wambui Muthiga, who has lived in the area for five years,  says she became sickly ever since she moved to that place.

The last time the sewage burst, she thought that a river had broken its banks because it was during the rainy season.

“We try to maintain our hygiene even with the sewage nearby but infections still come our way. Our children get sick all the time and we wonder because we give them clean food,” she tells Healthy Nation.

“I almost lost my child last week because she could not take anything, even water. She vomited and had diarrhoea that lasted for a long time. When we went to the hospital, we were just told that it was an infection in the blood. But for how long?” She quips.

Both Esther and Wambui have no insurance cover to pay for hospital bills and everytime they go to a health facility, they have to pay out of pocket.

“The last time I was in hospital I paid about Sh7,000. This is a lot of money even compared to what we use as a family for basic needs,” she says.

Anthony Ndung’u says ever since his family moved to the area in 1994, they have endured the stench of the sewage any time it bursts.

“It keeps blocking even when engineers come to repair it. We feel like it needs an upgrade because it is too old now. An expansion of the sewer line would be great,” he says.

“When I was a child, I used to get skin infections because of sewage water. At the time, we could travel far to get to a hospital because we didn’t have one nearby. This sewage has exposed us to health hazards and we only need it to be well maintained.”

The Healthy Nation team spoke to Nahashon Muguna, the managing director of Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, who was coincidentally visiting Silanga when we went to work on the story.

“The last time this sewer line upgrade was done was in 1987. This shows that it is already overloaded. Other trunks have to be done to be able to carry the extra load,” he says.

It is a conference of two major sewer lines coming from two major catchment areas. There is one from Manyanja road, Tena estate, Umoja 1, 2 and 3, Molem, part of Buruburu and Kariobangi. The other one collects waste from Juja road, Huruma, Kariobangi North, Dandora, among others.

Nahashon explains that the two lines are of the same size but when they meet, they converge and the overloading happens, which is why an extension is needed.

He explains that the sewer lines bypassing Silanga area were done with a vision of carrying about 110,000 cubic metres of waste water. This number has almost doubled because of population increase in Nairobi and is today carrying almost 200,000 cubic metres of waste water.

“The sewer line is overloaded and it needs to be expanded. Anything which is dropped here either intentionally or not leads to a blockage,” he says.

He explains that what happens when something is dropped is an actualisation of the buoyancy theory ,which states that if a body or a thing is immersed in a fluid, it displaces the water with volume that is equivalent  to the foreign body.

“This is the water that comes out through the manholes. The garbage that is thrown in therefore ends up blocking the sewer line. The sewer lines are actually down and have been covered. All these waters you see are from manholes that are created to do frequent maintenance of the sewer lines or if there are any blockages, they can be removed with ease,” he explains.

Occasionally, the Nairobi City Sewerage Company visits such areas to unblock a clogged sewer line. Nahashon explains that there are also landslides that occur along the sewer lines, which need to be handled with care to prevent danger.

“This is not a footbridge, but a bridge to carry the sewer line,” he says, pointing to what the residents have made a path to cross over.

He notes that there is a project in the pipeline aimed to construct a bridge in Silanga, which will likely be factored in this year’s budget .

“This project will link Silanga and Saika area,” he says

He, however, warns farmers against farming using waste water, saying the elements in waste water are not good for the plant or even the person eating it.

“We will come and clear all these vegetation, they are no longer vegetables because they are not fit for human consumption. We come here to do routine maintenance but people keep going back to the farms,” he says.

He proposes that the penalties for people planting using waste water should be increased to prevent the health hazards from happening.

“We arrest people here and take them to the city magistrate court, but they are only fined Sh10,000. The fine is not punitive and the law needs to be amended. I am aware that the Water Act is being amended to increase the fine,” he says

David Mwenda, a public health officer, tells Healthy Nation that sewage is waste water which sometimes could be contaminated with faeces, leading to health risks. He warns that it exposes the people around and those who consume foods grown from its water.

“Faeces are from human bodies that have different diseases and could be transmitted to other people. Children playing in such areas carrypathogens that end up affecting them. Some even get helminths (parasitic worms ),” he says.

“When residents living along sewer lines notice a sewer burst, they should take action immediately. They should notify the companies managing the sewer line immediately. In other countries, there are sensors that notify the companies but since we don’t have that technology here, we need to be prompt in reporting,” he advises.

He says it is important for the health department to assess the risks once a community is exposed to sewage.

“Sensitisation of health risks and even taking up measures such as deworming is necessary,” he says.

Some of the diseases that are likely to affect the populations around such areas are cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A and B, types of helminths and polio.

“Polio is on course to be eradicated globally and even in the country. It will become a challenge if the environmental factors are not well taken care of,” he explains.

Dr Joseph Wahome, a toxicologist, explains that eating vegetables grown along sewer lines can lead to intestinal upsets or headaches depending on the levels of chemicals found in the vegetables.

“Some of the common pathogens in sewages are Salmonella and E Coli. Sewages can also have heavy metal poisoning as well as that of organophosphates and mercury poisoning. This is because of some of the chemicals used at home like in detergents,” he explains.

He warns that cooking food that has been washed by a grocery vendor is unsafe and may not be done thoroughly, especially if they were  grown using raw sewage discharge.

“Adequate cooking reduces contamination levels. We need to start having traceability of our food in the market to the farm where it was grown. Regularly, through the various government machinery, we should do sampling of the crops to know the content that is in the vegetables. It will then be easier to deal with the farmers so that we can reduce contamination at that level,” he advises.

 
What do studies say?

“If land with suitable topography, soil characteristics and drainage is available, sewage effluent can be put to good use as a source of both irrigation water and plant nutrients. Sewage water contains high amounts of organic matter, nutrients and some heavy metals which are toxic to plants beyond a certain limit,” says a 2012 study published in the scientific journal Agriculture Water Management.

Another study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America shows that sewage water with high levels of Nitrogen that flows into rivers and eventually the ocean ends up affecting the marine ecosystem.

“That nutrient emissions from dense urban agglomerations can drive significant biogeochemical changes, has implications for management strategies, particularly given the high cost of nutrient nonpoint source control and wastewater-treatment-plant upgrades,” they explain.

“These changes are likely to compress habitat for a variety of marine organisms, with cascading ecological effects and implications for marine resources and water-quality management,” say the scientists.

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