Nairobi water rationing to continue till 2026
Nairobi residents will continue grappling with water rationing until 2026 when more dams will be completed.
This was confirmed by Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company acting managing director Engineer Nahashon Muguna who said that Ndakaini dam’s storage has fallen by 49 per cent to 34 million cubic metres.
This has resulted in low water supply to Nairobi.
“Water rationing is set to continue until that time when the dams we are currently building are complete which according to the master plan of water sources development in the city will be done by 2026 thereafter we shall be having enough water and surplus to take us up to 2035,” Engineer Muguna said.
Ndakaini dam produces 430,000 cubic metres of water a day, which is about 84 per cent of water supply to Nairobi residents and holds about 70,000,000 cubic metres at full storage.
Eng Muguna said that the situation has forced them to ration water through the equitable distribution programme to ensure every customer gets water.
LONG TERM MECHANISM
“We are supplying the city with 525,000 cubic metres of water a day against a demand of 760,000 cubic metres a day, but we are working with the national government to come up with measures to ensure that the county gets sufficient water through both long term and short-term mechanism,” he said.
The managing director was speaking when he appeared before the Nairobi County Assembly Water and Sanitation Committee led by chairman and Mihango Ward MCA Paul Kados on Thursday where he was tasked to explain when the urban water company would stop water rationing in the capital city which started in January, 2017.
But to his defense, Eng Muguna said that both the county and the national government had put up measures to ensure that water supply in the city is sufficient.
He blamed the water problems being experienced on prolonged drought, degradation of catchment, and global warming which has contributed to erratic weather patterns and inadequate rains.
He stated that on short-term basis, the county was banking on the Northern Water collector tunnel project, set to be completed by 2020, that would boost the county with an additional 140,000 cubic litres.
“Once the project is completed, we will raise the supply of water in the county to 665,000 cubic litres a day up from the normal supply of 525,000 litres,” he said.
Eng Muguna told the committee that an ongoing construction of some two more dams is also set to boost water supply in the city by 60,000 cubic litres a day by the same year, 2020.