From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Sat Feb 28 2009 - 10:03:04 EST
Woyane's Environmental Terror
February 25th, 2009
By Tedla Asfaw
The Koka Lake I know has turned green thanks to the chemicals damped
into the lake. Fertilizers, Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus heavily
used to grow commercial flowers and the untreated water from factories
surrounding Addis Ababa are the main causes. The less than thirty
minutes video on Al Jazeera, "People and Power and Green Lake," aired on
Feb 21 is now posted on Nazret.com and is a must see, what I call
another terror by regime of Tigray People Liberation Front (Woyanne) in
Ethiopia - an environmental terror that feeds the algae while killing
our people.
The carcinogen that is now contaminating Lake Koka is killing children.
That was not the case with the Koka I know more than twenty years ago.
Al Jazeera billed the program as a cost of the heavy growth of Addis
Ababa and its surroundings and avoid to blame the government that ownes
most of the these polluting industries and flower farms.
Except one European owner of the flower farm around Lake Ziway, far from
the Green Lake of Koka, no owner comes in public to be interviewed. The
Ethiopian tyrant, while was addressing the Youth in Addis Ababa few
weeks ago, there was one question of water related hazard for which he
blames the hide industry and that was a one minute question and answer
and so much for the concern of the government.
Ethiopia has no government that is accountable for the health and the
safety of its citizens and that is the bottom line. Human lives are
secondary and Al Jazeera, if it zoomed its lenses, could have shown
children, young and elderly with no home begging in the surrounding
government owned high rises.
The sad thing is foreign partners of this regime do also miss the Green
Lake. Haven't they seen or took pictures on their cell phone on their
weekend driving to Sodere? Polluted rivers in Europe and USA are now
back to life supporting fish and become a recreational area after years
of toxic damping and poor Ethiopia is encouraged to destroy its water
resources by pumping loans for a regime that is making fast money at the
expense of poor Ethiopian farmers ? Why are we not learning from other
countries or we have to first grow by destroying our ecosystem and then
start cleaning the mess ?
In a country where there is not any law that protects the public, it
might be considered a luxury to look for environmental law. However,
this is a criminal case where the harm is done to our people purposely
and the Meles regime officials have to be held accountable.
********
Not a drop to drink (Magnus Franklin writting about Aqaaqii River)
Nov 27, 2008
Magnus Franklin
Since settlements first began springing up, rivers have been a key
factor. But what happens when they turn from commercial channels to
trash tributaries?
It's the end of the rainy season, and Alemu Mengesha ventures out into
his fields outside the Ethiopian town of Akaki to prepare his next crop.
But he won't be ploughing or sowing just yet, because in the coming
three months he will have to clear the fields of the carpet of plastic
bags, shoes, tyres and other rubbish the floods have deposited on his
land.
But it's not just garbage that threatens his crops. The floods have also
saturated his fields with heavy metals and toxic chemicals, which will
make their way into his vegetables and eventually the markets of Addis
Ababa, where the very factories that poison his harvest line the banks
of the Akaki river.
Unlike many of the rivers that flow through large cities around the
world, which have already had a long journey before they reach the city
centre, the Akaki starts its life in the hills just outside the capital.
Yet when it leaves the city, the Akaki has turned from a sprightly fresh
stream into a toxic sludge, poisoning not only the residents of Addis
Ababa, but also the communities further downstream.
But as much as anyone would like to assign blame to a single culprit,
the problem is far too complex. The industries in Addis Ababa pour their
waste straight into the river; parts of the city are a virtual minefield
of faeces mixed with mud, and everywhere, plastic bags, discarded
sandals and household rubbish fill the gutters.
The government, meanwhile, plans to improve awareness about depositing
rubbish correctly by distributing information flyers - a particularly
disingenuous plan given the nature of the problem at hand.
The pollution of the Akaki is severe. A government source who wishes to
remain anonymous said that at the point where the river passes the
city's only sewage treatment plant (which serves about 5% of Addis
Ababa's households), it is actually more toxic than the raw sewage
entering the facility.
The pollution in the river also has a direct impact on Addis Ababa's
residents. Locals say that once the dry season is in full force, the
river is unable to wash away the malodorous sludge pouring into the dry
riverbed, leaving it to fester in the sun and saturate the surrounding
air.
Incongruously, the government actually has a good legal framework to
prevent the kind of pollution the Akaki suffers from, and strict
policies designed to ensure that the river is no worse than the
relatively clean Thames in London or the Seine in Paris.
Enforcement, however, is another matter. The Ethiopian Federal
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it does not have enough
resources to enforce existing legislation. For example, a law has been
passed to ban plastic bag production in Ethiopia, but Mengesha's fields
indicate that it is not very effective.
Meanwhile, the most polluting industries, such as the leather tanneries
that are responsible for the lion's share of heavy metals deposited in
the stream, have been given a five-year deadline by the EPA to clean up
their act .
"The tanneries and cement factories are priorities," says an EPA
official who prefers not to be named. "But it is a problem to shut down
these industries, so we are flexible. Rather than shutting them down, we
have developed the means to give them time to implement [pollution
control]."
The EPA's work in this area seems to be yielding results. For instance,
one of the main leather tanneries has a large sign at the entrance
outlining its commitment to pollution control.
By following the tannery's perimeter, however, it becomes clear that
these are just hollow words. The sulphuric odour emanating from the
factory's sewage is unbearable several hundred metres downstream, and at
the point where the sewage pipe meets the Akaki, the rocks and plants
are coated with a thick, oily, black slime.
"The smell is worse than the pollution in the river," says 15-year-old
Biruk, who lives in a shanty behind the factory. "We can't eat when the
smell gets bad, but the children still swim in the river."
Clamping down on industry is solving only half the problem. Human waste,
both excrement and rubbish, is also polluting the streets of Addis Ababa
and the Akaki. The EPA is having trouble getting big business to comply
with the legislation, and trying to persuade individuals to do the same
is proving a mammoth task.
http://www.oromoliberationfront.org/News/2009/TPLF%20waste%20trade.html