Water harvesting should be part and parcel of all development projects

Misheck Muthomi in a section of his five-acre farm in Buuri Sub County, Meru. He grows various crops for export with rainwater harvests, which ensures he has a minimum of 2.8m litres of water at any given time. [Phares Mutembei, Standard]

Kenya is thirsty. In the recent past, rainfall patterns have been erratic, resulting in water shortages. Agriculture, secondary industries and families are affected. Water vending business has boomed - but at what cost to public health?

The World Bank (2014) defined resilience as "the ability of a system, entity or community to adopt to a variety of changing conditions and withstand shocks while maintaining its essential functions.'' As a country we must put in place mitigating measures that will enhance resilience in the water sector.

These measures may be large scale and at individual homestead level. Development control is a valuable tool in management of human settlements which includes ensuring provision of clean water and capacity to withstand shocks of water deficit when evapotranspiration rates exceed precipitation.

Development control ensures that development complies, not only with approved spatial development plans, but also with relevant national and county policy guidelines, regulations and standards. Under the Constitution and the Physical, and Land Use Planning Act, 2019, the national government grants development permission for strategic national projects e.g. national trunk roads, airports and national housing projects.

On the other hand, county governments effect development control through approval of building plans, subdivision schemes, extension and renewal of leases, change and extension of user of applications submitted to them by wananchi.

At the national level, large-scale public works projects should factor in harvesting runoff water, water pans or diverting surplus water into other drainage basins. Sadly, with exception of Isiolo-Moyale Road, we have not done well in this regard. Water harvesting and storage should be factored in budgeting for construction of roads and made a condition for approval of such projects.

Artificial recharge of ground water aquifers has been successfully done in Denmark and Japan. Why not in Kenya. Inter-basin transfer of excess water is a constitutional function of the national government - it is not a devolved function.

Imagine the impact this would have if the national government made water harvesting inter-basin transfer and storage, a component in design and construction of all trunk roads! Putting it differently, the large surface area covered by national trunk roads, should not only enhance movement of people and goods across the nation, but be utilised as a "strategic national land'' for harvesting water.

The secondary benefit is storm water management, with the obvious outcomes of reduced soil erosion, mitigating damage to property and reduced human and wildlife calamities.

The frequent water shortages experienced in human settlements cannot be solely attributed to the inadequate rainfall. One of the main factors could be failure to harvest rain water. System losses due to inefficient infrastructure exacerbate the problem. Development control maybe useful in management of water resources.

County governments should make it mandatory that building plans have provisions for water harvesting and storage.

As a rule of thumb, water storage capacity should meet the threshold of 50 per cent of daily requirements. This way, county governments will indirectly contribute to realisation of the constitutional promise of clean and safe water in adequate quantities to every person.

This would have several benefits. First, domestic water shortages would be militated against. Second, destruction caused by storm water would be addressed. Third, incidences of water-borne diseases would decline.

Finally, we would bequeath generations unborn a clean environment which is their constitutional legitimate expectation.