Lake Victoria: What ails world biggest fresh water source ?

Sometimes last March, hydrologists reported Lake Victoria waters having risen by a record 13.66 metres. This was more than a metre higher than the 2020 record.

Much as there are swashbuckling tales explaining the lake’s water rise, it sickens many shoreline residents that once bouncing healthy fresh water lake no longer enjoys that wholesomeness.

Ogutu Okwinyo, a lakeside resident, sadly looks back at the backflow from the risen waters.

“It not only destroyed infrastructure, levelled houses, eroded soils, destroyed farms but also altered the lakeside ecosystem. This was amidst the backflow waters butting  in huge human casualties and damages resulting in livelihood losses, with unusual and equal ferocity injecting chains of water related diseases to people, animals and plants,” Okwinyo says.

“In an area prone to drought, crop losses heightened residents’ food insecurity, a barrier to healthy eating and good health,” cried agricultural nutritionist Agnes Ndiewo in Wambasa.

Talking good health, Great Lakes University’s Dean of Agri-business, Technology and Microbiology Leo Ogalo notes that massive siltation and huge soil erosion deposited in Lake Victoria raises its water and soils its freshwater’s health.

Prof Ogalo further observes that waterways like River Nzoia and 16 other rivers and streams faithfully transport water, waterweeds, nutrients and pollutants from hills, plateaus and other sources into the lake.

That, he says, springs no surprise why the world’s second largest freshwater lake is brownish.

And overshadowing approximately 80 per cent rainfall water feeding Lake Victoria, effects of siltation and soil erosion browns and raises the 82-metre deep lake’s water levels.

Ogalo points out that ecological transitional zones, forested wetlands and moors like Kanyabol and Yala swamps rising up in the lakeside region also erode top soils, abandoning them down in the lake.

Observing whenever heavens open in places like Usigu Peninsula, Wambasa plateau, rainwater pushes topsoils into Lake Victoria, Prof Ogalo raises concern with diminishing sand in beaches along Lake Victoria.

He laments that besides human’s huge sand harvesting, massive deforestation, strong winds and tidal erosion dutifully push sand into Lake Victoria thus beefing up its benthic zone.

‘”Organic sediments making benthic zone significantly dish food nutrients for organisms renting the seafloor for residence,” Ogalo says.

This ecological zone housing the lakes’ seabed includes its sediments surface and sub-surface area, thus considered the lake’s digestive system.

“Like any digestive system, benthic zone is sensitively delicate and open to various ecological infections, “ said Ogalo, concerned with Lake Victoria’s health.

Although the world’s largest freshwater fishery lake produces, one million ton of fish yearly experts say  she could produce , much more .

But, much water having gone under the bridge, the lake’s health isn’t  sound since wanton human activities keep contaminating its fresh waters and depletes its ecosystem.

“Pollution, environmental degradation, habitat degradation, habitat loss, industrial wastes, chemical deposits, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer spills ,soil erosion, agriculture, biodiversity loss, and countless challenges defile the lake’s waters,”Kisumu City  environmentalist Kenneth Ogosiah mourns, blaming concentrated concoction spills and plastic pollutants negatively impacting Lake Victoria’s ecosystem health, waters and aquatic life.

Mr Ogosiah sadly looks back at a recent scientific finding that about 20 per cent of  Lake Victoria’s fish have ingested microplastics, of bags, mattresses, clothings, hard plastic pollutants among others.

“That leaves lots to be desired. Poor waste management, deforestation, charcoal burning, bushfires, sewage spills, intense cultivation, soil erosion, animal husbandry and high rainfall, steamed by high temperatures, now scratching around 79 degrees Fahrenheit, defilths Lake Victoria waters and ecosystem.

Flagging his microbiology emblem, Prof Ogalo regrets livestock and wildlife urinating and defacating in the lake’s fresh water.

“Such concentrated animal concoction lays a  perfect fertile breeding ground  for excessive nitrogen and phosphorus, which fuel cyno-bacteria growth.

 “Cyno- bacteria microbes harm Lake Victoria’s ecosystem and raw waters used by millions of people without boiling or treating it,” weeps Ogalo, submitting that since cyno-bacteria fast tracks growth of Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB), it springs no surprise that the lake’s brownish water largely turns green due to excessive algae growth.

Chipping in, Homa Bay based medical doctor Robert Ouko says algae presence in waters ships cocktailed ailments in skin/eye irritation, rashes, gastrointestinal fuses, liver damage, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis, typhoid, vomiting, cramps , jaundice and fatigue to people directly using Lake Victoria’s contaminated raw water.

“Such raw water usage contravenes Kenya’s Constitution’s Article 43, gifting every Kenyan the right to clean and safe water in adequate quantities and reasonable sanitation.

Gunning towards this goal, World Economic Forum supporting closing gap between global water demand and supply by 2030 notes:

“Since the year 2000, safe human water consumption has shot up by 12 per cent while access to basic sanitation fell by five per cent in Kenya.”

With such data, indicative of Kenyans using raw water and possible health effects and public and private hospices forbidding bills, pushes many shoreline residents  to forest pharmacy despite most of such foliage being deforested.

Prof Ogalo notes that excessive HAB greening Lake Victoria’s water gobbles lots of oxygen in food making and this denies other aquatic life their fair share of oxygen.

More hazardous

“Further, algae obstructs sunlight reaching aquatic lives thus hindering aquatic plants’ food making process while choking fungi, animals, fish and detrimentally depleting aquatic habitat.

Ogosiah says that explains dead fish seen floating and decline of some of the 200 fish species found in the freshwater lake.

That is unfortunate because fish supports food security and the lakeside economy. Therefore, any decline in fish numbers threatens food security and is an economic drawback to the region.

“ Interestingly, being a determined and viciously unforgiving destroyer even in death, the ghosts of decomposed dead algae still haunts the living when it creates oxygen minimum zone, thus  eating up the dissolved oxygen, further threatening aquatic life, which naturally serves as food source for fish and other aquatic lives,” glooms Ogalo,

He warns that the resurgence of water hyacinth in the fresh water lake is more hazardous.