By JOHN SAKALA
Chambeshi Water and Sewerage Company (ChWSC) has purchased a modern Compact Treatment Plant valued at K9 million to provide clean and safe drinking water to Nakonde residents who have been grappling with coloured water for a long time.
ChWSC acting Managing Director Luckson Simumba has told The Independent Observer that once installed and commissioned the Plant would supply clean and pure water to over 30, 000 customers in Nakonde.
Eng Simumba said the Plant which is a portable Compact Plant has the capacity to produce over 300m3 per hour to meet the water demand in Nakonde District.
“The system is a kind of a compact water treatment plant that contains all the units in one such as sedimentation, high pressure filters and disinfection,” he said.
The Plant procured with the help of Zambian Government to improve the quality of life for its citizen, the MD is optimistic from the tests done so far that the plant would end the brown water jigsaw.
The Nakonde Water System was constructed in the 1970s.
“Of course the system was better then, with the few population”, he said.
The increase in population has its own adverse effects on the environment as far as agriculture methods and cutting of trees for charcoal are concerned.
Nakonde has no perennial rivers hence it depends on the streams within Nakonde and those from Tunduma in Tanzania.
The streams in Tunduma are highly polluted with all sorts of pollutants hence making the process of conventional filtration system impossible affecting turbidity.
“Mostly during the rainy season it was difficult to achieve less 5NTU Turbidity level”, he said.
Due to the inadequate of the system, the silt mostly was ending up in the slow sand filters after sedimentation and with the reaction of Aluminium Sulphate made the filtration impossible to achieve the quality of water.
The Compact Treatment Plant was procured from Spain and has produced good results in Nakonde.
