EPA asks stakeholders to push for water quality

The Brong-Ahafo Regional Directorate of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called for collaboration with stakeholders in ensuring environmental best practices for the early detection of any change in water quality in the region.

The call was contained in a report on “The Quality of Some Water Sources in Brong Ahafo Region” released at a day’s programme to disseminate environmental and particularly water quality results in Sunyani.

The programme organised by the Brong-Ahafo Regional Directorate of the Environmental Protection Agency was to inform stakeholders about the water quality status and ensure that the aquatic ecosystem was saved from further deterioration.

The 50 participants included the media, municipal and district coordinating directors, planning officers as well as representatives of the Ghana Water Company Limited, Community Water and Sanitation Agency and Food and Drugs Authority.

The report said over the decades, there had been a perceived decline in the quality and quantity of water sources in the Brong-Ahafo Region due to illegal mining, discharge of untreated industrial effluent and bad farming practices.

It said to assess the quality of these water sources, water quality campaign was undertaken from January 2011 to December 2012 on some selected water sources which were river Tain, Subin, Goa, Pru and Tano in the Region.

The rest were Kintampo Water Falls, Fula Falls, also in Kintampo, Akokora Kwadwo borehole in Sunyani, a borehole in each of the Senior High Schools (SHSs) at Drobo in Jaman South District, Jinijini in the Berekum Municipality, Atebubu and Kwame Danso in the Sene-West District and an Artesian Well at Bonsu near Nkoranza.

“The study involved measurement of some physico-chemical parameters such as temperature, PH, total hardness, Sulphate, Flouride, Nitrogen as Amonia, Nitrogen as Nitrite, Organophosphate and Sulphate using Wagtech Palintest Photometer 7100 and electrometric method for PH and Temperature”.

The report said the results were compared with the Water Resources Commission’s criteria for raw water, and explained that “the results revealed that all the groundwater sources were slightly acidic and may have the potential to cause health problems to the users”.

In addition it said “most of the physico-chemical parameters measured was within the ‘no health effect’ range except total hardness, total iron and organo-phosphate which exceeded in some cases”.

These implied that the water quality of the selected water sources in the Region “is generally good but has the tendency to shoot above the ‘no health effect levels’ if the illegal mining activities and other bad environmental practices are not controlled”.

The report recommended that all stakeholders should cooperate to enforce environmental laws with constant monitoring for early detection of any decline in water quality.