Vast African Lake disappearing as Levels Dropping Fast
Pastor Dale Morgan
Dec 9, 1:13 PM EST
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Vast African Lake disappearing as Levels Dropping Fast*
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
JINJA, Uganda (AP) -- At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake
Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep - and
dropping. "The scientists have to explain this," said ship's engineer
Gabriel Maziku.
Across the bay, at a fish packing plant, fishermen had to wade ashore
with their Nile perch in flat-bottomed boats, and heave the silvery
catch up to a jetty that soon may be on dry land and out of reach
entirely. Looking on, plant manager Ravee Ramanujam wondered about
what's to come.
"Such a large body of water, dropping so fast," he said.
At 27,000 square miles, the size of Ireland, Victoria is the greatest of
Africa's Great Lakes - the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior.
And it has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years, and
by as much as a half-inch a day this year before November rains
stabilized things.
The outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja is part of the
problem - a tiny part, says the Uganda government, or half the problem,
say environmentalists. But much of what is happening to Victoria and
other lakes across the heart of Africa is attributable to years of
drought and rising temperatures, conditions that starve the lakes of
inflowing water and evaporate more of the water they have.
An extreme example lies 1,500 miles northwest of here, deeper in the
drought zone, where Lake Chad, once the world's sixth-largest, has
shrunk to 2 percent of its 1960s size. And the African map abounds with
other, less startling examples, from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya,
getting half the inflow it once did, to the great Lake Tanganyika south
of here, whose level dropped over five feet in five years.
"All these lakes are extremely sensitive to climate change," the U.N.
Environment Program warned in a global water assessment two years ago.
Now, in a yet unpublished report obtained by The Associated Press, an
international consulting firm advises the Ugandan government that
supercomputer models of global-warming scenarios for Lake Victoria
"raise alarming concerns" about its future and that of the Nile River,
which begins its 4,100-mile northward journey here at Jinja.
The report, by U.S.-based Water Resources and Energy Management
International, says rising temperatures may evaporate up to half the
lake's normal inflow from rainfall and rivers, with "severe consequences
for the lake and its ability to meet the region's water resources needs."
A further dramatic drop in Victoria's water levels might even turn off
this spigot for the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million
Egyptians, Sudanese and others.
"People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro," said Aris P. Georgakakos,
the study's chief author, speaking of that African mountain's melting
glaciers. "We have something much bigger to worry about, and that's Lake
Victoria."
Each troubled lake is a complex story.
Lake Chad's near-disappearance, for example, stems in part from overuse
of its source waters for irrigation. Deforestation around Lake Victoria,
shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, makes the area a less efficient
rain "catchment" for the lake, and overfishing and pollution are
damaging its $400-million-a-year fishing industry. Kenya's Rift Valley
lakes, some just a few feet deep, have always fluctuated in size, even
drying up with drought.
But African leaders say things are different this time, because
long-term climate change may eclipse other factors.
"These cycles, when they've happened, they haven't happened under the
circumstances pertaining now - the global warming, overpopulation,
degradation," said Maria Mutagamba, Uganda's water and environment minister.
African temperatures rose an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th
century - matching the global average - and even more in the past few
decades in such places as Lake Tanganyika, climatologists say. If
greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere, temperatures may
be several degrees warmer by this century's end.
At Lake Victoria's receding shoreline, a place of scavenging storks,
weedy expanses of water hyacinth, fishing boats derelict on dried lake
bed, people see what's happening but don't understand why.
"In just a few years, the lake pulled back from there, maybe 60 meters
(200 feet)," said fisherman Patrick Sewagude, 24, pointing to old
high-water marks at Ssese Beach, near Kampala, Uganda's capital.
Someone had planted a few rows of corn on the exposed lake bed. Grass
was taking over elsewhere. "It's tough. The fish have gone way out. You
pull up stones in your nets," Sewagude said.
Back in Jinja, 40 miles east of Kampala, researchers at the Lake
Victoria Fisheries Organization said falling water levels are the latest
blow to the dying biology of Lake Victoria, where pollution has helped
kill off scores of unique species of tropical fish in recent decades.
Now tilapia, once a prime food fish, are declining because their inshore
breeding grounds are vanishing.
"People for many years haven't seen such a sudden change in the lake
level," said the fisheries office's Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, a biologist on
the lake for 35 years. "Right now it's very difficult to say what will
happen. It's a grim scenario, of worldwide climate change."
Around the lake shore, everyone has his own theories.
"The water's too hot, and the fish are going deeper, beneath the nets,"
said Modi Kafeel Ahmed, a Jinja fish processor. But the lake has been
overfished, too, he said. "If it goes like this another five years, the
lake will be empty of fish."
For 30 million people living in its basin, Lake Victoria is a vital
source - of livelihoods and food, of water, of transportation, of
electric power.
Almost 200 miles across the lake from here, Tanzanian authorities have
reduced water supplies to the city of Mwanza because an intake pipe was
left high and dry. The same is happening in Uganda, where German
engineer Erhard Schulte is pushing work crews to finish refitting
Entebbe's city water plant, extending its intake pipe 1,000 feet farther
out into the lake.
"The old Britisher who designed the original plant never expected the
lake would drop this way," Schulte told a visitor.
Perhaps the worst impact is on power supplies. Tanzanian factories have
shut down because the rivers powering hydroelectric dams, and
replenishing Lake Victoria, are running dry. Kampala, a city of more
than 1 million, has endured hours-long blackouts daily.
Uganda's two big hydro dams, side by side on the Victoria Nile, the
lake's only outlet, are victims and - some say - prime suspects in the
crisis.
In 2003, facing growing Ugandan demand for electricity, the Nalubaale
and Kiira dams produced a peak 265 megawatts of power. In the process,
their operators began overshooting long-standing formulas regulating
flow of water out of the lake, an independent hydrologist later concluded.
That outside study, cited by environmentalists, contends 55 percent of
the lake-level drop since 2003 is traceable to excessive outflow. But
the dams' private operators and Ugandan officials strongly dispute that.
Paul Mubiru, Ugandan energy commissioner, says the dams have had a
"negligible" impact on Lake Victoria, and points to Lake Tanganyika's
similar fall in levels - with no dams involved.
Earlier this year, the operators announced they were reducing the dam
outflows, "but our observations show that even with the reduced outflow,
the water loss is still on the increase," Mutagamba, the water minister,
told the AP.
Falling lake levels, meantime, mean lower "head" pressure at the dams.
Their output has dropped to 120 megawatts, pushing Uganda deeper into
economic crisis.
It is such unanticipated ripple effects - from abrupt environmental
change - that underlie the warnings worldwide about global warming.
Scientists find another unexpected example in Lake Tanganyika, where
they say warmer surface waters may be depleting fish stocks.
Many African lakes go unvisited by scientists, but what is known is
troubling enough, says veteran researcher Robert E. Hecky, of Canada's
University of Waterloo. "It is some of the most imperative data we have,
that global climate change can be affecting these African water bodies,"
he said.
A "very comprehensive, very realistic" study of Lake Victoria is needed,
preferably conducted by U.N. specialists, said Frank Muramuzi, the head
of Uganda's leading environmental organization.
"Businesses are standing still, not working. Fishermen can't get enough
fish. We do not have enough water supplies," Muramuzi said. "Rains alone
won't bring back the lake levels, because there would still be climate
change, a lot of heat, evaporation. It's reached a point where people
don't know what to do."