Dam overflow leaves villages in distress

Residents around Karimenu II dam in Gatundu North, Kiambu county are now having sleepless nights after the torrential rains pounding most parts of the country leaving a trail of destruction and suffering threatening to destroy their homes.

Locals from Gituamba, Kiriko, Kanyoni, Iruri, Gathanji and Buchana villages are staring at a tragedy after the water levels rose to their homesteads submerging some structures such as pit latrines.

This comes at a time when Athi Water Works Development Agency revealed that the water reservoir is already full and spilling. “Currently the dam capacity is at 22.6 billion litres. The dam serves Gatundu, Ruiru, Juja, Tatu City, Githurai and parts of Nairobi,” the water agency said in its daily updates.

Most affected

Villagers told journalists that most of the affected are those living around the dam’s buffer zone.

The government has been seeking to acquire around 600-acre land surrounding the dam to protect the dam’s ecosystem and facilitate control of possible pollution of the water resource through plantation of trees.

Currently, the dam water, residents said, has already submerged their farms and can no longer grow crops.

Led by Joseph Muiruri alias Machete, the residents decried that some homes are no longer habitable after they developed huge cracks that residents blame on the close proximity to the dam while most lavatories in the villages have caved in as a result of being filled with water from the dam.