Zimpapers Logo

Edmore Mazivofa Features Correspondent
With the rainy season gone for a couple months now, residents of Norton have begun what has always been a long dry and thirsty journey until the next rains. The shortage of water in Norton – run by the Norton Town Council – is a monumental irony.
The town, which is etched between two major water bodies, Darwendale Dam and Lake Chivero, has not been developed to pump, treat and supply its water and relies on the Harare City Council.

Interestingly, Harare is failing to supply water to its own residents and those of another “dormitory town”, Chitungwiza.

Norton, which has a total population of close to 100 000 and requires 20 megalitres of water every day, is only getting 5 megalitres a day from Harare.

It owes Harare close to $2 million, according to reports.

Norton’s water problem has persisted for years and many legislators have come and gone with no end in sight for the predicament.

And to alleviate their woes, residents have resorted to digging water wells, and the rainy season offers relief as they often collect water from rooftops.

Both these operations expose residents to waterborne diseases, and in the latter case, asbestosis.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority stopped residents from drilling more boreholes saying they were depleting underground water.

“This is an untenable situation,” bemoans one resident, James Mangwana.

“We cannot continue to thirst for water when we have a lot of water around us. There is need for this town to have its own water treatment plant from Lake Chivero,” he said.

For someone who works at the Morton Jaffray Water treatment plant, the irony is even starker.

“When I leave home every day in the morning at six, my wife will have already left for the borehole around four to fetch water for our little boy as we believe the well water is not safe for him because he is still young. After a day’s work, I can’t believe I will have purified thousands gallons of water and pumped it in the opposite direction.

“If they can give us just few hours of clean water per day, it will be fine,” said one worker from Morton Jaffray Water works who stays in Maridale.

It is common cause that where there is no proper water supply, sanitation is a problem also.

Human waste is said to be the most dangerous water pollutant in the developing world as, according to experts, four out of five waterborne diseases are caused by lack of proper sanitation or drinking water.

Residents of this quite little town resort to blair toilets and septic tanks for their waste.

These in turn contaminate drinking water as most of these are not very deep and when rains come the waste from these toilets seeps into in the wells.

Water wells are problematic in that unsanitary landfills and uncollected garbage are everywhere in Norton and these are a major source of ground water contamination.

Solid waste in such dumb fills and dumps contain food, plastics, metals and toxic material such as lead, mercury that affect the drinking water.

Rampant illegal gold mining activities have also not helped the situation.

Gold is processed using chemicals like caustic soda, mercury and cyanide that are collected in disposal ponds which commonly hold waste water produced during the mining operations.

When these ponds are filled up they are discharged carelessly resulting in this waste matter eventually finding its way into the only drinking water source of Norton residents.

In populated areas like Katanga, Maridale and Johannesburg, septic failures are common which results in excessive amount of nitrates in the soil which will filter into the resident’s underground water system.

There is also the issue of sewer burst pipes, which are now an eyesore, and these can affect wells that are more than two kilometres away –  and that is exposing everyone in the small                                                                               town.

“When officials come here and see these wells, they think it is normal but in our hearts these are time bombs if there is an outbreak of cholera. As far as Lake Chivero’s water is concerned, we are being given a raw deal and treated as second class citizens,” said Grace Chikondo, who resides in the flamboyant suburb of Twin Lakes which was named because of its being hemmed between Lake Chivero and Darwendale dam.

As the town has farms all around it, pesticides from farms and vegetable gardens when rains come are washed down the wells and they threaten people’s lives as most of the wells are poorly constructed.

This is a town that is situated in mostly moist areas where water bone diseases can easily multiply.

Meanwhile, nothing has yet materialized of a project that was launched in late 2013 which is expected to pump 40 megalitres into Norton town daily.

A separate water plant with a capacity to pump out 5 megalitres is due to be installed in the town as well.

The council had sought assistance from a Germany organisation, GLZ.

The plant is expected to get its water from Darwendale Dam, bringing total water capacity generated by Norton Town Council to 45 megalitres.