'Prevent metal pollutants from entering water bodies'

GHANAIANS have been advised to make efforts to prevent metal pollutants from entering water bodies to keep them suitable for their intended uses.
Additional advice has also gone to the people to adopt the habit of harvesting rainwater, since it is sometimes safer and also cheap.
These were some of the recommendations made by a group of researchers contracted to carry out a water quality monitoring and assessment on the major water bodies from the southern and coastal systems of Ghana.
The work, which was carried out between 2005 and 2008, was commissioned by the Water Resource Commission (WRC) and the researchers were scientists working with the Water Resource Institute (WRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
Presenting a paper on: “Trace metal concentrations in major rivers from the southwestern and coastal rivers of Ghana,” two of the researchers, Dr Osmund D. Ansah-Asare and Mr Humphrey F. Darko, indicated that many of the country’s water bodies had been contaminated by metal pollutants making them unsafe for human consumption.
There was also the issue of treated water becoming contaminated along the distribution lines and therefore becoming unsafe.
The researchers identified human activity as a major source of pollution of the water bodies and recommended attitudinal change to help preserve water.
For their part, Messrs Francis K. Y. Amevenku and Emmanuel Obuobi called for a merger of scientific environmental and cultural practices in the management of the country’s water bodies.
They explained that in times past, there was strict observance of social norms and customs including religious beliefs and practices which in many ways protected water bodies.
They pointed out that although there were still a number of traditional arrangements for water resources management at the local level, less of these were currently efficient as communities expanded.
The researchers stated that the breakdown of those traditional systems and the undermining of the community level institutional arrangements in West Africa had been attributed to the advent of Christianity and Islam, migration of fishers, the need for institutional restructuring and modern technology.
They observed that since an appreciable number of chiefs were scholars in their cultural and academic disciplines, they could be effective promoters of the process of merging scientific information and cultural practices for the benefit of the society.