A scientist, Dr Frederick Amu-Mensah, has called for legislation on rain harvesting as part of measures to stop perennial flooding in parts of the country.
Speaking on the Science and Technology series on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3FM on Tuesday June 28, Dr Amu-Mensah said legislation would force many homeowners to install rainwater harvesting equipment as part of measures to check flooding.
“When you have land with the natural vegetation, when it rains, the amount of water that leaves that land is very small because some is trapped by the vegetation, some goes into the soil and very little leaves the land,” he told host Prince Minkah.
“When you cut off that vegetation and then you [construct] either a road or a building, it means that very little of that water will enter into the soil, very little will be trapped by the structures that you have constructed and so the majority of that water will wash off the land and if you look at the size of Accra and imagine that all these little bits of water are rushing off the land, then, eventually, there is nothing that you can have but floods.”
He added: “The legislation in Britain is that if you build a structure, you make sure that the amount of water that is leaving the land at the time that you went to build is what you must maintain, and how you do it is your own problem”.
“You come to this land and the authorities should be able to tell you this land currently in its state releases this amount of water. Whatever structure you are going to put on it, just make sure that that amount of water can leave the system and then if you do that, it means the person will naturally be forced to install a rain water harvesting system.”
Asked if he was calling for legislation on his proposal of harvesting rain water, Dr Amu-Minkah said: “of course” and wondered why government had not already thought of a legislation instrument to make rainwater harvesting a law.
“…I don’t know why leaders have not considered this because we have had a number of workshops. They come there and listen to us, we have even been instigating that building codes that permit when you are going to build, they will tell you to have a manhole for your toilet, that one is there. But, they don’t say have a rainwater harvesting system and if they are not going to put it there, we are only going to talk about it,” Dr Amu-Mensah added.
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