570 megalitres of raw sewage dumped into rivers daily as Zimbabwe’s treatment system collapses

Parliament has revealed that only 20 of the country’s 63 sewage treatment plants are currently functional, resulting in the daily discharge of an estimated 570 megalitres of raw or partially treated sewage into the environment.

This emerged in a report on water pollution hotspots in Harare and Chitungwiza compiled by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife and presented in Parliament on Thursday.

The inquiry was prompted by an invitation from the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) for legislators to witness first-hand the degradation of municipal wastewater infrastructure and its impact on primary water bodies.

According to the report, submissions and evidence from EMA, the City of Harare and Chitungwiza Municipality pointed to a systemic collapse of wastewater management infrastructure across the metropolitan area, which has compromised key water bodies and created a severe environmental and public health crisis.

The committee said the crisis is heavily concentrated in the Harare metropolitan area, where the City of Harare oversees a vast network extending over 5,500 kilometres.

The system is supported by seven strategic sewage pump stations – in Budiriro, Avonlea, Chisipite, Fidelity, North Eastern, Marlborough and Bradfield – and seven primary treatment works, including the flagship Firle and Crowborough plants.

Despite having a combined design capacity of 219.5 megalitres per day, the facilities have been rendered largely ineffective by rapid population growth and ageing infrastructure.

Site inspections revealed severe failure points driving the degradation. Chief among them is Amalinda Crossing, where critical trunk main pipelines have remained collapsed for over 15 years.

The failure causes about 80 megalitres of raw sewage to be dumped directly into the Mukuvisi River every day, which then flows into Lake Chivero, the city’s primary water source.

The committee also found that rivers flowing through urban centres have an average turbidity of nearly 30 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU), six times higher than the healthy limit of five NTU.

High turbidity indicates a dangerous concentration of suspended solids such as silt and dirt, which blocks sunlight from reaching aquatic plants and causes physical damage to fish gills.