Meeting with the different ministries

• Ministry of Public works
• Ministry of water resource development
• Ministry of Agriculture and
• The deputy mayor of Nairobi city
  

At the ministry of Agriculture the team met Kenneth O Ayuko, Director of Agriculture and J K Kiar, Project Coordinator of National Agricultural and Livestock Extension Programme (NALEEP). The discussion revolved around the overall water scenario and food security in Kenya and the experiences from India and contribution made by CSE's campaign in streamlining the community-based water management systems as a national agenda.
According to the officials agriculture sector's contributes is 20 - 30 per cent to the GDP. They have a total of 48 million hectares of which only 20 per cent has been exploited. The reason for such a gloomy scenario is the lack of technological development in the area of water management.

Meeting with Ministry of water resources

Due to the political turbulence in Kenya not much thought was given to develop and sustain the water sources. After Kibaki took over as the President of Kenya, there has been a deliberate effort to streamline and effectively manage the water sources in the country. According to Ayuko, drafting of the water policy 2002 is an ideal example.

The importance of rainwater harvesting in the rural areas of Kenya is gaining momentum and presently the following strategies being adopted to increase the agriculture production

• Roof catchment technology
• Road runoff catchment
• Water and farm ponds
• Sand and sub surface dams and
• Conservation tillage

While discussing the urban water scenario the officials were skeptical about the present day systems and were of the opinion that rainwater harvesting must be considered as the option to decrease the city's dependence on rural areas and to create alternatives locally.

Later in the day the team met K G Chesang, SS Director of water development, ministry of water resources management and development. In the beginning the team briefed him about the green network as well as the experiences of Jal Swaraj campaign. According to him the enthusiasm of the minister Martha Karua is helping them to take up certain bold steps. Secondly also due to the water sector in Kenya being given the highest allocation in the annual budget. He did acknowledge the importance of rainwater harvesting and clearly mentioned that traditional practices were being sidelined to the contemporary practices. He was of the opinion that the faith on traditional systems needs to be restored. Ironically in the end he did project his strong affiliation for major and medium water projects.

In the evening the team met Lawrence G Ngacha, deputy mayor of the city council Nairobi. During the meeting Ngacha was briefed about

• CSE and its water campaign
• Green water network and
• Initiation of urban rainwater harvesting campaign

The meeting with the deputy mayor was extremely fruitful. On CSE team's initiative that the deputy mayor agreed to organise a seminar cum orientation programme for the city council's councillors and water engineers. The mayor himself was extremely interested to know more about the details and impact of urban rainwater harvesting initiatives in India. According to him the increasing pressure on urban centres has forced them to look at alternatives and urban rainwater harvesting seems to be the need of the hour.

Seminar on urban rainwater harvesting

On 27th August a seminar was jointly organised by RELMA and CSE at Lundgren hall in World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi. Architects, representatives from NGOs, Educational institutions, government officials, researchers, journalists, and interested citizens from Nairobi attended the seminar. Elijah K Biamah, Lecturer from Nairobi University, inaugurated the seminar. The seminar was divided into following sessions

Presentation at RELMA

Majority of the queries was related to the campaign, CSE's impact on policy makers and recharge technique in urban rainwater harvesting.

• Kikuyu springs from 17 km
• Sasumua dam 70 km
• Ruiru dam 36 km
• Ndakaini/Thika dam (Ngethu water works) 50.7 km

Therefore Barklund was of the opinion that if Nairobi could harvest water locally then the pressure on the adjoining rural areas would lessen and the water instead of being diverted to the city can be used for increased agricultural production.

Establishing model projects in Nairobi

The national Museums of Kenya has been responsible for introducing the concept of rainwater harvesting in Nairobi city by executing rainwater harvesting in the museum campus. In fact in May 2003 the museum was able to partly solve the water problem of their employees when the entire city was facing acute water crisis due to the bursting of the pipeline from Sasumua dam. The employees were allowed to take rainwater from the storage tanks to their houses for meeting the domestic use. Otherwise people in Nairobi people were buying water for 7,000 Kenya shillings for one tanker during the monsoons.

Underground storage tank

RELMA designed the rainwater harvesting plan for the botanical garden and the initial funding for the construction of three underground tanks all of 105,000 litre capacity. The tanks received water from the front portion of the roof of Mammal hall. Following this success, RELMA upon request from the museums further facilitated the design and installation of plastic lined of 30,000-litre capacity for the reuse of water from the snake park which houses tropical snakes tortoise and crocodiles.

After observing the water harvesting initiatives, the team met with Idle Omar Farah, Director General NMK. The meeting was organised to share with him the CSE's experiences - urban rainwater harvesting in India and its strategies to make it a movement. During the meeting CSE proposed the option of developing NMK as a model rainwater harvesting project - first of its kind in Kenya. The DG did agree to the option and also mentioned that they would be interested in harvesting the entire rainwater falling on their campus.

1. Introduction of the water scenario in Kenya
2. Nairobi specific water scenario
3. Status of water availability in Nairobi
4. Present water problems in Nairobi
5. Basic of rainwater harvesting along with case studies from Nairobi
6. Water management techniques
7. FAQs

Alex Oduor from RELMA has been made responsible for the compilation and production of the urban rainwater harvesting manual. Once the first draft is ready a copy will be sent to CSE for the editing and layout. The remaining work of printing will be accomplished at Nairobi.

The visit to Elementaita village in Nakuru district of Kenya was indeed a learning experience. Women of that area were able to solve their drinking water problem through effectively harvesting rainwater from their rooftops.

Initially women fetched water from a seasonal river - Kimmu that was at a distance of 10 km from the village. They use to walk all this distance to carry 20 litres of water. The source was being used both by humans and livestock, therefore the quality was not good. It had lot of biological contaminants, and it was muddy. On assessing the deplorable water scenario the government agency constructed borewells to source groundwater for domestic usage. Unfortunately the borewells had fluoride content above permissible limit. The fluoride content found in the groundwater was 12 to 14 mg/l. Due to lack of other water sources, people were forced to consume the fluoride rich water. As a result large population of people started suffering from fluorosis. To minimise the adverse impact the government agency installed a fluoride treatment plant in the village. As it always happens the plant stopped working and people had to once again depend on the borewell for water.

Rainwater storage tank

At this stage Rotary International came to their rescue. Rotary established Elementaita Rotary Community Corpse and this group was responsible for implementing rainwater harvesting project. The project entailed construction of rainwater storage tanks of 10,000 litres with the help of community participation. The total cost of one storage tank was 50,000 KSH. The cost of evenly shared between the community and the club. The community contributed 24,000 KSH and the remaining 26,000 was Rotary's contribution. Till now approximately 116 such storage tanks have been constructed. In order to eradicate fluorosis Rotary has set a target of constructing 100 storage tanks every year in the region. Along with water harvesting the women group are also taking care of environment by plant trees under this project.

The women groups from as far as 20 km had come to share their experiences with the team. Most of the groups performed skits to highlight their water woes and the impact of rooftop rainwater harvesting.

Presentation by CSE on urban rainwater harvesting: experiences and challenges was organised by the Egerton University, Njoro at University Seminar Hall. P K Kiniani, Dean, Department of Engineering and Technology chaired the session. Apart the lectures university students actively participated in the workshop. The discussion after the presentation mainly revolved around the feasibility and relevance of groundwater recharge, ownership of water being recharged and the role of university in improving the water scenario in the region.

Incidentally, the university has 16 borewells in the premises and their entire water requirement is being met through groundwater extraction. Presently, only 3 among the 16 borewells are working and the rest of them have completely dried up. The water scenario in the university was extremely upsetting

Presentation at Egerton University

The university officials were excited once the CSE staffers shared the experience of Jamia Hamdard University. According to the dean, one has to start respecting rainwater otherwise the university night have to face grave consequences. The university officials were also briefed about the possibility of developing the university as a model project for the other educational institutions to follow.

• CSE's Jal Swaraj campaign
• Rainwater harvesting techniques in Delhi
• Potential of rainwater harvesting in Nakuru town

The industrialists were the most excited lot. Immediately after the presentation, most of them wanted further clarification with regard to the groundwater recharge as it was a new concept to the people of Nakuru. The urban rainwater harvesting presentation at Nakuru did trigger a sense of concern and interest amongst people.

Rainwater storage tank at Masai Mara

In Telak, a village bordering the Masai Mara wildlife reserve, RELMA joined hands with a private company sharing the goal of improving livelihoods for the community. One check dam, 23 water tanks, 5 community wells and a lot of know- how are the outcome of this collaboration. By fitting gutters on the houses, it is easy to lead the rainwater runoff from the roof into a water tank - and get good quality drinking water. The owners of the house paid equivalents to two to three cows, while RELMA trained the artisans who constructed the tanks. Apart from this they have also constructed a infiltration gallery from where the base camp gets the water. The community wells constructed near the riverbed have solved the drinking problem, now people have to travel only a few kilometers to get potable water instead of the muddy river water.

• For capacity building on urban rainwater harvesting at the South Asia level
• A joint parallel session and an exhibition on water at the Pan-African Conference at Ethiopia in December
  
  
  
  
  

In the end the workshop with the councillors was fruitful as it helped them to realise the importance and potential of urban rainwater harvesting in Nairobi's context. The Mayor did commit that he would be happy to collaborate and work in tandem with RELMA and KRA

Output

• Initiated urban rainwater harvesting campaign at Nairobi and Nakuru
• Developed the framework for Nairobi specific urban rainwater harvesting manual
• Planned an internship training for two professionals from Kenya on urban rainwater harvesting (New Delhi and Chennai)
• Identified model project in Nairobi and planned others in the adjoining cities
• Planned Rain Centre either at Kenya, Tanzania or Ethiopia
• Finalised the India programme for the Southern and Eastern Africa team
• Oriented politicians to introduce water legislations
• Planned out CSE's participation in the International exposition being organised by the Kenya Rainwater Association on October 24th - 25th, 2003 at the National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi
• UN Habitat, Nairobi proposing to network with CSE through City Foundation, New Delhi for capacity building at South Asia level on urban rainwater harvesting
• Established RELMA as a clearing centre for CSE's publications
• Identified individuals and organisations associated with water in Kenya

• Upscaling the campaign to other SEARNET countries like Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia etc
• Strengthening the urban rainwater harvesting campaign at Kenya through setting up of model projects, miscellaneous services, dossier on practitioners, developing city specific manuals
• Planning an East African visit by rural water warriors of South Asia