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DAM-L Congo Water Pipeline planned/ sunday times
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Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 09:46:08 -0800
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From: lori@irn.org (Lori Pottinger)
Subject: Congo Pipeline story in Sunday Times/LS
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Sunday Times
The Southern African Development Community is investigating the possibility
of diverting water from the Congo River to alleviate water shortages in the
thirsty south.
If implemented, the project would dwarf the multi-billion dollar Lesotho
Highlands Water Project, which now already supplies water to Gauteng.
And while this study gets underway, a group of Congolese businessmen are
developing a plan to build two giant pipelines. One is slated to bring
water from the mouth of the Congo to Walvis Bay, 1000km away, and the other
to pump water right across Africa and through several war zones to supply
the Middle East via Port Sudan a distance of 2000km. However, this
project, dubbed variously the Solomon or the Okapi Pipelines, has been
widely derided by Southern African water experts as fanciful.
Phera Ramoeli, a Lesotho government official who co-ordinates the Sadc
water sector, confirmed the study. _There_s a project to see the
possibility of tapping the waters of the Congo to supplement the water
supplies of water-thirsty countries of the region,_ he said.
Namibia will implement and pay for the six-month, R200 000 study.
Countries that might benefit include Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
More advanced studies would then have to follow if the idea seemed
feasible, Ramoeli said.
Ramoeli said he could not estimate how much the Congo project might cost to
build, _but it would definitely be a very, very, very big investment
project, that would require a lot of finances_. It would certainly be much
bigger than the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which is expected to cost
$4 billion over 32 years, he said.
Dudley Biggs, the Namibian Deputy Director of Water Resources Management,
said a long-distance pipeline such as envisaged by the Okapi Pipelines
project would be _prohibitively expensive_.
_What could end up being a possibility over the long term are transfers
from the upper reaches of tributaries of the Congo to upper tributaries of
other rivers such as the Zambesi,_ Biggs said. This would reduce the
distance the water would have to be pumped, and also the altitude of
lifting the water over the Angolan highlands.
The other south-flowing rivers which could receive the Congo_s water are
the Kavango and the Kunene.
The Namibian government already has a project placed on ice because of the
prohibitive cost and concerns about the environmental impact on the
Okavango Delta to pump water from the Kavango River southwards for use in
the Windhoek area.
Biggs added: _The argument is we are using water in Southern Africa, water
is becoming quite scarce. What happens when water is fully utilised? Is
there another potential source, or must we cope with what we have, end of
story._
The Okapi project is being pursued by a Congolese firm called Westrac,
together with a US firm named as Sapphire Aqua Corporation. Germain
Socombe, who identified himself as the president of Westrac, told the
Sunday Times from Fort Worth, Texas, that a feasibility study on the
$6billion project was now underway.
He said the water would be supplied free by the government of Laurent
Kabila _as a humanitarian gesture_, although the cost of transporting it
would be recovered from users. The water would cost around 90 US cents a
cubic metre, he claimed, and the group_s web site promises to create 400
000 jobs, and to build clinics and hospitals along the pipeline_s course.
However, neither Sadc nor the Namibian government has had any contact with
the Okapi project. And Biggs said his calculation showed the cost of water
delivered to Windhoek in this way would initially be more like R50 a cubic
metre.
Independent water scientists are sceptical even about the more modest Sadc
study, however. Steve Rothert, a water resources specialist for the
California-based International Rivers Network, said he thought the proposal
would prove to be uneconomical. His calculations showed that water
delivered to Windhoek in this way would cost at least N$12 per cubic metre
almost triple the current price.
In addition, the security issue of traversing a war zone, and the
ecological impact on the Okavango Delta would have to be considered. Other
techniques being developed by Namibia including desalination, _water
banking_, recycling and others, could keep up with the country_s growing
demand, he said.
ENDS
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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