Once pristine waters now a health hazard

Sitting on the beach of Dakar’s Hann Bay, where the waters lapping the shore are coloured red by effluent from a textile factory, fisherman Babacar Sall says that 20 years ago the seas off Senegal’s capital were clean and full of fish. Today his son’s eyes are red from conjunctivitis and his granddaughter, playing on the beach in sand thick with worms, is covered in a rash. “It’s difficult to keep the kids out of the water unless you watch them all the time,” said Sall. Swimming is officially forbidden in the heavily polluted bay, whose immediate hinterland is the industrial zone of Dakar, a fast growing city of more than three million people. The last water quality tests in 2004 showed a high level of pollution by industrial chemicals and raw sewage. The sea water of Hann Bay was found to contain a concentration of faecal streptococci - a type of bacteria found in human excrement - 17 times higher than the limit recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) The tests also showed a high level of other harmful bacteria, including the microbes that cause salmonella poisoning. “Even though it is difficult to prove that pollution is directly responsible for illness, it seems clear that we face a health hazard here,” said Ndeye Khary Ndoye, the head doctor at the local health centre. He said many of the 1,000-odd people who come for treatment each month have skin infections, including scabies, and stomach parasites like roundworm. From Copacabana to ecological disaster Until the 1980s, Hann Bay was renowned for its pristine white sandy beaches. They were often compared to those of Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro. In Wolof, the local language, the Bay is called Yaraax, which means, “clear water”. But nowadays, industrial effluent and domestic trash float by the shore, oil reservoirs and chemical factories have been built nearby and an acrid smell wafts from the bay into neighbourhoods several kilometres away. Industrial waste is the primary cause of pollution in the bay, whose shores accommodate 70 percent of the factories on the Dakar peninsula. “Industries are deaf to people’s complaints,” said Frederic Bambara of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a non-governmental organisation that fights to preserve the environment. But untreated sewage dumped in the sea from a residential community that has tripled in size over the past 30 years is also a huge problem. An exodus of people from Senegal's poor and semi-arid countryside swelled the population of what was once just a fishing village from 37,000 in 1976 to 110,000 in 2004, according to figures from Dakar town hall. But the sprawling community that is still known as Hann Village lacks a reliable supply of clean drinking water and a proper drainage and sewage treatment system. Locals nowadays use a drainage canal that was originally built to channel rainwater into the sea as an illegal dumping ground for household waste. People living along Canal 6 don’t worry about digging septic tanks. They simply lay a drainage pipe between their home and the canal. “When I was a kid, there were fish right the way up the canal”, said the head of the FENAGIE fishermen’s union, Babacar Fall. But today its dark and stinking waters are crusted over by what appears to be human excrement. A small baobab tree is growing out of the filth in the middle of the concrete-lined ditch.

Fish market in Dakar

No more fish Many solutions have been proposed to solve Hann's problems of human overcrowding and water pollution. In February 2003, an inter-ministerial plan proposed enlarging the community's narrow streets and knocking down houses built within 30 metres of the shoreline and resettling the inhabitants displaced by these moves. Such action has become increasingly urgent since many houses flood during the rainy season, but many local residents are reluctant to move out of their present homes. “We would agree to move, but we must have access to our boats,” said Sall. “If we can’t get to the sea, it will be our death,” said his son Dhiam, a fisherman like his father and grandfather before him. Like the Sall family, many residents of Hann Village are still fishermen but Fall, the head of the local branch of the national fishermen's union, is gloomy about the future. “Before 1973, the bay was full of fish. Now it’s empty,” he said. As a result of pollution and over-fishing, Dakar’s 10,700 fishermen now have to go further and further out to sea in their brightly painted wooden canoes in order to get a decent catch. Fall, who is 60, says the business is no longer profitable. Behaviour is slow to change Efforts are under way to try to reduce pollution in Hann Bay and improve local conditions. A sand-cleaning operation financed by the Netherlands is due to start in the coming weeks. A Senegalese company called Sen-environment is to remove, cleanse and replace a metre-deep layer of sand on the beach. But company engineer Christian Moalic said that once this has been done, it will still be necessary to change the behaviour of the population and conduct an annual cleanup of the beach. “The authorities are concerned and are working to find a solution,” said WWF's Bambara. “I believe that Hann Bay could be restored to its former beauty if there is enough support.” This, he said, must come from Hann residents and the Senegalese government as well as international aid agencies. But Sall, for one, is sceptical that the government will do anything. “The state doesn’t care about us,” he said, watching passively as children played in the polluted water and a woman threw yet more garbage into the sea.