River water rationing in Embu sparks protests as drought bites hard

Diverted Drying River Thiba loses capacity to channel water downstream for domestic and farm use in Embu County as drought continues to bite in the country. Jan 23, 2017. [PHOTO: JONAH ONYANGO/STANDARD]

On Thursday, hundreds of young and energetic men of Lukogwe area, Embu County, quickly assembled and made a decision. They would not die of thirst, not if they could help it.

Armed with pangas and other crude weapons, they marched uphill, following the course of River Thiba. Their mission – to stop any further diversion of water upstream.

River Thiba flows from its source in Mt Kenya, snaking its way to Kamburu Dam in Embu County through Mwea in Kirinyaga County. When it reaches the drier parts of Mbeere constituency, Embu County, it stops being a river and turns into an oasis.

River Thiba is life to residents of Lukogwe. They rely on its constant flow for all their household and commercial needs.

“We have gone without drinking water for 10 days and have been forced to walk several kilometres to fetch borehole water which is not sufficient for our domestic use,” said Damaris Mundigi at her home in Lukogwe.

When The Standard on Saturday caught up with the 65-year-old Mundigi, she was taking refuge from the scorching sun under a tree in her compound.

The band of young men that marched upstream to find a solution to the problem of water did not succeed, she told us. When the young men reached the first farm with a diversion, they forced the farmer to open it.

However, the water that had been stored was so little that most of it was quickly sipped by a thirsty earth that had gone for long without a drop of rainfall. Most of this water never reached them downstream.

But, somehow, River Thiba got water. While Mundigi is happy, it is still a mystery as to how, suddenly, the water stopped. Even more puzzling is how it suddenly came back even without a single drop of rainfall.

True, all over the country, there has been little downpour. And like other streams across the country, excessive heat from the heavens soaked up all of Thiba’s water, leaving about 50,000 farmers who depend on it for water with nothing but a few pools. Or so Mundigi was told.

But she was not convinced.

“There have never been such a problem. This is the first time I am seeing this with my own two eyes,” said Ms Mundigi of River Thiba.

RARE EXPERIENCE

“In 1984, we stayed for seven months without water, but the river continued to flow,” she said.

She says that since childhood until now when she has been married and has children and grandchildren, nothing has been as permanent as River Thiba.

Also, for the first time, she witnessed villagers fight for the little water that had been trapped in the crevices of River Thiba’s bed. But a bigger fight was looming. A fight between those downstream who need River Thiba for their subsistence farms, and those further upstream who need it for their commercial farms.

One of the commercial farmers in Mbeere, who requested for anonymity, thought the expansive Mwea Irrigation Scheme was to blame for the water depletion.

Mwea Irrigation Scheme has a gazetted area of 30,350 acres. Some 16,000 acres has been developed for paddy production.

According to the farmer, the “politically influenced zones of Mwea and Moya” were absorbing all the water for planting of rice.

“This is the main cause of the depletion of water as rice is one of the most water intensive crops. The water authorities have refused to regulate the water supply into these rice zones due to heavy political interests in the area,” said the farmer.

In 1996, he said, Water Resources Management Authority (WRMA)- the agency the regulates use of water bodies- regulated and rationed water in rice zones which allowed an ample water supply along the rest of River Thiba. This, he says, ensured that there were no severe repercussions of the drought. “Today, the number of people reliant on the river has more than tripled and WRMA has refused to regulate and ration water going into rice zones due to political influence and sway within the rice zones,” he added.

When we visited Mwea Irrigation Scheme, there was no evidence of the paddies gulping all the water. If anything, the main canal was dry the rice field was blonde- or the colour of death for rice. The farmers here, just as residents in Mbeere, were angry.

Their paddies had gone for four days without water. Elizabeth Kanambiu, a rice farmer at Mwea, said the water from upstream in Kirinyaga had not been coming, making it hard to do irrigation for their rice.

She said there were so many people upstream farming huge ranches, and yet a dam had not been built for them.

Now she expects about 10 per cent of harvests from her two-acre farm that she has rented.

According to the manager of National Irrigation Scheme- Mwea Innocent Ariemba, it isn’t true that Mwea is taking up all the water. If anything, the farmers had, from Thursday when the youths in Mbeere took up arms to Saturday, not had even a drop of water into their paddies.

He said more than 20 intake points had been developed upstream without control structures. “Those are the ones causing us problems. In fact, we lost about 20,000 acres of ratoon crop for lack of water,” he said. A ratoon is a new crop (especially of rice, bananas, or sugar cane) that grows from the stubble of the crop already harvested.

There are about 7,000 registered farmers, each of which has on average six direct dependents. At least 49,000 people depend on the scheme directly. If you add in those who depend on it indirectly, then the figures rises to 60,000. This, to politicians, is not just a number of people, it is a number of voters.

LOW LEVELS

MP for Mwea Peter Njuguna blamed WRMA for over-issuing licences to individual farmers. These intakes, he said, had in turn reduced the level of water in River Thiba. He estimated that 30 individual farmers had been issued with permits to get water from the river.

We could not get a response from WRMA as the phone went unanswered.

He said NIB had decided to ration the water between the canal, taking it into the paddies.

“You know there are villages in the scheme. So we want those people to also get water for drinking,” he said noting that the canal which was closed a day before yesterday would be opened after three days.

Water flowing into River Thiba is, thus, being rationed just as the water flowing in taps.

When we were living, Mundigu, as an afterthought called this author. She had a terse message: “Tell those people never to play those games again.” If only she knew that after a few days, River Thiba would dry up again.