The proposed desalination plant, a learning opportunity, or an event to shrug off?

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

November 01, 2014

For us in Ghana, technology has so far been a trend, as in fashion. The newer the technology the better, especially if it is coming from abroad.

The latest idea to come is a desalination plant for a country that does not lack freshwater resources.

The new seawater desalination plant at Nugua is said to be soon processing a 13 million gallons of potable water a day.

Heavy rainfall in the same Nugua area will produce more water in a month than the destination plant can in a year.

The irony is the freshwater from the rains produces no immediate impact than the deaths and destructions that will occur in the general area of the rainfall.

Better still, the Volta River discharges into the sea in ten minutes more volume of water than the entire Accra Metropolitan area would need in a day.

The above two events bring up quickly, how superfluous the proposal for the acquisition of the Nungua desalination plant is and together they make one wonder about the waste in resource management.

The Volta has "an average annual discharge of 42,700 cubic feet “(319,396 gallons) per second, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

And about rainfall in Africa in general, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) had this to say in 2006; that "The rainfall contribution (in Africa) is more than adequate to meet the needs of the current population several times over."

But where is the public policy for rain harvesting in Ghana, or is the proposal for desalination plant construction just angling for a bragging right?

The cost of the desalination plant, as stated, is amusing.  For the price of an initial investment of $125 mil on our part, and after 25 years of revenue bleeding by the contractor and operator, we will get to keep the plant.

What a price to pay for something so utterly unnecessary.

According to our government, there are other waterworks project in the offing.

The major one is the Kpong Water Expansion Project - to bring "a total of 65.3 million gallons of water per day to the existing production capacity”.

And to meet the total demand of 158.3 million gallons per day for the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area by the end of 2015.

Still, keep in mind the total discharge that the Volta freely gives daily to the sea, starting with 319,396 gallons per second then add the rains.

Any move to tap into either the Volta's spillover and the rains will bring huge benefits to the national economy.

According to experts, a square ft of space on a roof in a 1-inch rainfall zone can yield 6 gallons of rainwater.

The Accra region has an average of more than 2’’ per rainfall yearly and far more during the rainy seasons of June through September. Imagine the gallons of water a household roof of 1000 sq ft in Accra can yield in a rainstorm!

Harvesting rain was what some of our ancestors did. The machinery and technology to do this are within the skill reach of our builders and engineers today.

Same with the technology to capture a bit of the discharge from the Volta and to pump back the water inland to strategically placed reservoirs as sources for freshwater.

Add up the gang of workers to lay the pipes to divert the spilled water from the Volta and those needed to equip house roofs for rain harvesting and still one will have no idea of the boost in employment these projects can generate. 

It has to be restated that we have no freshwater resource problem. We have an overabundance problem water resources, enough to make other countries envious.

But going for saltwater to desalinate now is an overreach to what is a basic problem.

Desalination projects are good for drought and desert regions. At the same time, the technology comes at a higher production cost, higher energy consumption, and possibly, a harsh impact on fish life and the ocean itself.

The technology can be justified only if we needed it. Certainly, we don't - not as a fashion statement.

Even when it come to the old ways of procuring water, we have no use for our local talents. The traditional ways of procuring and distributing water into inland areas have been given to foreigners; China and Spain.

I am not an engineer. However, from readings of history, I have come to know that great feats are achieved only through the constancy of profuse imagination and daring.

The Aqueduct of Segovia, Spain, built around AD 50 is still standing.

The Great Wall of China is still there, standing as an example of old engineering feat.  According to Wikipedia, "Several walls were built from as early as the 7th century BC, with selective stretches later joined together by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC

 The Taj Mahal (around 1650), a building of resplendent beauty.

The Trans-Siberia Railroad (1891-1916), some 5500 miles of track running through hostile weather environments, crossing 16 major rivers bigger than our Volta, is still a service that is being expanded.

On our continent of Africa, there is the Church of Lalibela, hewed out of solid rock in the mountains of Ethiopia. The church, considered the 8th wonder of the world, has stood since the 12th century and still serves as a place for worship today.

These are ample evidence of the boldness of the human enterprise.  So where is ours?

Ancient Rome could have built the pumping stations that will divert the spilled water from the Volta back inland.

The above is not to mock.  it is to bring home a sense of the acute absence of daring in handling the existential challenges we face daily.

When challenges come up, our governments prefer the easy but expensive pass of assigning the task and the profits to foreigners, rather than the risk of assigning it to local expertise.

By avoiding the risk, we repeatedly inflict on ourselves the damage of living in the limited pleasures of the Third World, without a sense of any great accomplishment.

Some fifty years back, some of our engineers and artisans participated in the building of the Akosombo Dam, a groundbreaking experience we thought would release the skill set required to tackle water-related projects.

Had that whole experience from Akosombo been encouraged and continued, we could have developed and sustained skills that could later be used to bring back water to reservoirs or lakes in inland areas for use as sources for potable water.

That opportunity for development was aborted.

There were 13 complimentary dams planned as part of the Akosombo project. Each could have been an excellent freshwater reservoir!

The above is just the imagination part. The reality is, for fifty-odd years after the construction of the Akosombo Dam, we have allowed volumes of water to escape daily from the Volta to the sea; same as we allow rain run-offs from roofs to gutters then into the sea.

And oddly enough, through the desalination process, we now going back to the sea to retrieve the water we have lost!

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, November 01, 2014

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