Bagre Dam Spillage

THE NEED TO STOP MANAGING THE BAGRE DAM EXCESS WATER SPILLAGE DISASTER AND OFFER PERMANENT SOLUTION

All too soon, that time of the year has arrived with preparations to deal with the effects of the Bagre Dam. It is a period where people in parts of the North suffer at the hands of water they have been praying for, for the survival of their crops all year long. The Bagre Dam excess water always sounds the alarm bells for the residents along the catchment area to relocate to higher grounds. As for their farmland and crops, they are left at the mercy of the floods that follow the spillage. Since the construction of the Bagre dam in 1992, excess water is spilled to reduce the pressure on the turbines each year. These spillages have caused chaos along the White Volta Basin and its surrounding villages. For as long as this problem has existed, successive governments have had the daunting task of how to find a permanent solution to the problem. 

This year is no exception. With the onset of the spillage, nobody can predict the number of precious lives that will be lost. As for the amount of property to be lost to the spillage, the least said the better. Last year’s spillage cut-off several communities from the rest of the country for weeks. According to gbcghana.com, a state of emergency had to be declared in 2007 in the three regions of the North after spillage flood claimed fifty lives and with more than 3,000 people displaced. How long should this dreadful catastrophe continue to befall the people along the White Volta located near Bagre village in Burkina Faso. The 67 million CFA facility funded by the World Bank, was to generate electricity for the people of that country. 

Each year, the people of the Northern part of the country especially those along the White Volta Lake are warned to relocate to safe land as precautionary measures. The people always do not heed to theses warning; which may be justified. This is because, most of them are farmers and therefore cannot afford to leave their crops which are almost due for harvesting and flee into starvation. This has been the case for more than two decades now and help gets to them after the damage. 

It is high time as a people we stop the spillage from the Bagre dam as a natural disaster. For, truthfully, this is not a natural disaster. This is a manmade commotion and the time it would arrive, the possible damage it would cause and what we can do to avert it or at least minimise the consequence, are all not in doubt. It is about time to do some re-engineering so that the White Volta can contain the excess water from the spillage. This can be done by dredging part, if not all of the basin which currently covers 106,000 km² to increase its current depth to minimise the overflow at its banks. The dredging of the lake would create deep waters to breed better fish stock. There can also be canals so that farmers, who live reasonably far from the banks of the lake, can get water for their crops and support all year round farming. The construction of the canals would certainly help control the overflow at the banks of the lake which causes the floods all the time. The stocking of relief items is not the best course of action to be made in anticipation of a disaster as Ghanaians. That is a short term measure. 

The days of managing the disaster caused by the excess water spillage from the Bagre dam are long over. Let us as a nation show some sense of urgency to the situation and mobilize funding for re-engineering of the White Volta, so that Ghana can derive maximum benefit from the excess water spilled from the Bagre Dam which has become an annual ritual. 

GBC