I am really amazed at the level of ignorance and individualistic leanings from the politicians. All the hullabaloos surrounding the North Collector Tunnel project has got nothing to do with decimation of some species or desertification in downstream of the rivers where water is to be tapped from and such other kind of nonsense. It is all about Murang'a politics.

To start with the feasibility studies for Ndakaini Dam was done in 1982/1983 during the same period the one for construction of Multipuporse dam at the confluence of Ndarugu and Nairobi river near Munyu in Thika and Greater Kibwezi Irrigation Project. The latter still remains on paper, but as late as last year there was some serious activity on going to the next step.

The findings were that the Ndakaini dam was going to hold 70 Billion litres and a consistent extraction of 430 Million litres per day for the first 10 years after which this would start to decrease due to silting of the dam and significant shrinkage of catchment. The report further gave a compesation solution for this decreased productivity of the dam, the Northern Tunnel Collectors whose detailed technical evaluations and the Social and Environmental Impact Assesment (SEIA) showed that there were no going to be any adverse effects on ecosystem and communities living within the project area and downstream all the way to Tana delta as the extra water to be extracted from the affected rivers was the flood water and not the normal flow water as recorded by the flow stations. Besides other negative impacts as envisaged in the report were going to be addressed accordingly and satisfactorily during the implementation stage.

Upon the completion of the study, Nairobi City Council did not have the Ksh. 1.5 Billion required then to construct the dam and so it had to shelf it. It was not until the year 1988 when the construction started through funding from World Bank, ADB, European Investment Bank and the Kenya Government.

Just before the construction started some 450 ha of land was acquired at a total cost of kshs 127 million being compensation for the 300 households (small scale farmers) who were to be involved in the displacement and relocation.

Whatever else that is being peddled by the politicians is pure chicken shit with no technical facts to support their arguments. This is simply a fight against Wa Iria being perpetrated by Gitura and his Kigumo counterpart. The problem is they used the wrong avenue by hiring a mouth piece who has extrapolated the issue all the way to indian ocean for his own selfish gain. Probably they did or did not see that coming.