Destruction of wetlands around Lake Victoria, a source of drinking water to millions, is fast removing a buffer that stops it being poisoned by sewage and industrial waste, a Ugandan wetlands expert said on Wednesday. Paul Mafabi, head of the government wetlands programme, told Reuters rampant draining and building on wetlands surrounding Africa's biggest lake threatened to kill its fish and contaminate water supplies to a gamut of countries. "The worst case scenario is the lake is going to die, even with its huge size," he said.

Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania each have long -- often densely populated -- shores accross the lake, which also feeds the White Nile, a crucial water source to Sudan and Egypt. "Wetlands are being drained to build houses and clear land for agriculture," Mafabi said. "Their capacity to filter industrial and human waste is drastically reduced."

Mafabi said the growing economies, industrialisation and population of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya had caused a surge in chemical and human waste being tipped into the lake. "They are flooding more raw waste into the lake yet the wetlands we need to absorb them are receding. They can no longer cope," he said. Besides threatening rare species of plant, aquatic and bird life, like the magnificent crested crane, Uganda's national bird -- the wetlands are breeding ground for fish, a key income source for the thousands of people living around them.

Mafabi said drinking water was also becoming contaminated. "Water quality is declining. The water now is worse quality than it was 10 years ago because there's raw waste in it."

Factories being revived and new ones set up on the shores, mostly for fish processing, are dumping untreated chemicals in the lake while discarded rubbish from major cities like Kampala was also piling up, he said. An influx of fertiliser used at flower farms, which have sprung up to tap lucrative export markets, also is threatening fish stocks and the east African economies they feed, he said.

Fertiliser starves freshwater bodies of oxygen by feeding plagues of algae that crowd out other organisms, killing fish and other aquatic life. He said the Ugandan government was working on a scheme to protect its remaining wetlands, with plans to gazette an extra 270,000 hectares for conservation. "Building, agriculture and setting up commercial estates in these areas will finally be prohibited," he said.
By Tim Cocks
(Planet Ark, 23/11/2006)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39110/story.htm