Untreated sewage polluting Harare water supply

Zimbabwe's biggest sewage plant has broken down, sending
tonnes of raw effluent into a major river and polluting the water supply of
the capital Harare, city authorities said on Monday.

Harare's Firle sewage plant has been down since last week and requires at
least 20 billion Zimbabwean dollars (U.S.$80 million) to fix, a huge burden
for a country already in the grip of its worst economic crisis in decades.

Officials from the national water authority said half of the raw sewage from
Harare -- a city of some 1.5 million -- was now discharged into a river that
flows into the capital's main water reservoir, the state-owned Herald
newspaper reported.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority declined to comment further on the
issue on Monday. But the Herald said the discharge of the untreated sewage
was "posing a serious health hazard downstream."

Harare's sewage crisis is the latest symptom of an economic crisis which has
left the country close to collapse and many key infrastructure facilities
from roads to power plants badly in need of upgrade or repair.

Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate of 1,281 percent and
unemployment has surged to about 80 percent under an economic crisis many
critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's government.

The Herald said the Firle plant was completely inoperable.

"Biological nutrient removal plants, inlet works, primary settling tanks,
biofilters and effluent pumps as well as clarifiers, digesters and boilers
at the plant are all down," the newspaper said.

Mugabe, 82, and the southern African country's sole ruler since independence
from Britain in 1980, denies he has ruined one the continent's most
promising economies, saying it is a victim of sabotage by opponents of his
black nationalist policies.