ENVIRONMENTALIST WORRY AS PUBLIC CONTINUE TO ENCROACH ON WETLANDS

Part of Enyau River in Ediofe, Arua City being used as a car washing bay. Photo by Anslem Ojaru.

By Anslem Ojaru

Arua City

Environment officers in Arua have raised concern about the continued encroachment of the buffer zones of Enyau River.

It has been revealed that people have continued to dump waste and carry on with their construction works along the river which endangers the aquatic life.

The Arua city environment officer Mary Dawaru discloses that despite the numerous sensitization efforts, the community has paid a deaf hear to their warnings.

“Enyau’s size is becoming small and smaller each day, we have received information from the public on discharges by some trucks that collecting sewer disposables from people’s homes and they are disposing them off in the river, likewise building houses, doing other constructions, extracting a lot of water from there and then diverting water ways to your farmland those are all ways that and disorganizes that system.”

The Arua district environment officer Hannington Adronzi warns the community of imminent danger if wetland encroachment continues.

“So in the event people continue utilizing that, it compromises and it reduces the size of the river then they continue washing the cars which eventually contaminates the water once people wash with soap that, then the oil from the vehicle and the grease also find its way to the water body also affecting the quality of the water, otherwise it needs joint efforts, of course when people temper with water you see floods happening because there are no spaces that control the excess water.”    
 
Dawaru further reechoes the voice of protecting and respecting the buffer zones along the river.

“we shall not get tired of talking but the community should also help us, they should understand that what we are talking about is for the benefit of all of us because, once that place is disorganized all of us who are humans are going to be disorganize because we a have a direct relationship with the system.” 

Many of the wetlands along the riverbanks have been encroached on and people have ignored the 100m exclusion zone as specified under the law.
 
 
 
 

Written by admin