By Wondirad Seifu | The Reporter

Lake Abijata is dying, although the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is boasting that it is the country’s sanctuary for a colony of exciting birds. Oddly enough, the Environmental Protection Authority has indexed the lake in its recently published green book, presenting it to parliament as a proof its effort in environmental protection when Abijata Soda Ash Enterprise (ASAE) is diligently harvesting sodium carbonate (soda ash), destroying plants, chasing away birds and depleting the volume of water.

The situation is encouraging NGOs to draw big funds. But they spend the funds mainly for publicity. As usual, the Prime Minister is turning a blind eye to the grave problem facing the lake.

A few years ago, I had participated in a training course on “Environmental Impact Assessment” organized by the Heinrich Boll Foundation. The training was “cooked with fluidly program”, as it was graphically described by its energetic organizers.

In fact, it was generous with stipend, and, since then, I was veritably exposed to the “art of wandering.” Among others, the program constituted a visit to Lake Abijata and its bug, ASAE. Welcome to the dying lake!

Lake Abijata is found in southern Ethiopia along with other Rift Valley lakes: Zeway, Langano and Shalla. It had covered an area of 204 sq. km. in 1984, at 1,578 m. above sea level. It had hosted a variety of colorful birds, which I had never seen in Kenya. It was said that when the training group arrived at the lake, a significant number of bird species migrated abroad for good, probably to Kenya.

As several studies have shown, the birds’ colony continued to diminish day by day as the bio-chemistry of the lake and its holdings continued to be obliterated by ASAE. The factory is using heavy water pumps to suck the lake’s water and spray it on PVC plastic lined ponds with a total area of 150 ha at a depth 25 centimeters. They are like a hot pan in an area where the temperature is over 300 C. The water can be seen with the naked eye as it changes into vapor, leaving its sediments in the ponds.

But each liter of the waste is yielding only about 15 grams on half a spoonful of crude soda ash (trona). Considering the annual capacity of ASAE, 20-30 thousand tonnes, its corresponding quantity of soda ash water demand might be on a par with the content of the controversial would-be hydroelectric dam – Gibe III. Therefore, it must be with God’s grace that the life of the lake is extended to this date. Thanks be, indeed, to God!

Evidently, as you approach the lake, you can trace a layer of water marks circumscribing the lake, formed as the water recedes to the center of the lake. I was probably moving as far as the 10th or 11th chapter of the trajectory. According to the studies, the lake was reduced to 108 sq. km in the 1990s, down from its previous size of 204 sq. km. in 1984. And it keeps shrinking probably to a quarter of the latter because ASAE continues to supply its ill-produced output to the local factories.

Of these, the major one is Caustic Soda Factory (CSF), operating near ASAE. Incidentally, before both factories were installed, caustic soda, chemically known as sodium hydroxide, was produced at the household level in various parts of the country. I saw a number of households using it to boil soda ash with lime powder to yield caustic soda for the purpose of making soaps from animal fat and vegetable oil.

It was this same public technology that scaled itself up to create CSF. Unlike ASAE, CSF has a discharge known as calcium carbonate. It had been idly piled up forming a white mountain in front of CSF’s main gate, though it would have some useful application. Does it have any environmental impact?

The visit was winding up by exploring ASAE’s processing complex, which consists of mainly crushers and packing units, segregated from the ponds. And, under the sunlight, I was forced to hide my head in my coat while following the group like a shepherd. It was then that I discovered blue colored crystals spreading at the doorsteps of the plant’s store.

I was stunned because the same crystal, known as copper sulfate, is used for impregnating wooden poles to protect them from being damaged by termites. To satiate my curiosity I had asked one of the factory’s employees, “What is that blue crystal supposed to do?” He laughed and said, ‘It is used to clean the water pumps.”

This possibly put copper sulfate under the pump’s legs to prevent their blockage by planktons or minced fish. However, in water there is no such local action and hence any soluble matter should lend itself to the law of dissolving. Therefore, the blue crystal must be uniformly distributed in the lake. That is why, as many had claimed, the birds are disappearing. Copper sulfate is harmful to any form of genetic material. Hence, if there is no plankton, there is no fish; if there is no fish, there are no fishing birds. Of course, depletion of the water is the main problem of the lake.

Apparently, ASAE is a living proof of a problem of ignoring environmental impact assessment of a certain economic activity, and it costs an irreversibly damaged environment, perhaps like Lake Abijata.

However, possibilities are not yet exhausted in that the same products of the factories could be produced with a number of alternative technologies, and our chalk and talk chemists would recount them to the fantasy of their counterparts: the timid chemical engineers. Or our trade experts could smartly exploit opportunities in the comparative advantage region.

This might cause inconvenience for the factories’ employees and stakeholders. But, the notorious BPR, which is extravagantly orchestrated by the seemingly parasite institutes, the Capacity Building and Ethiopian Management Institute, would help to generate a host of solutions perhaps in converting the factories into tourist lodges. Just an idea!

In spite of such pros and cons, some have attributed the lake’s problem to be beyond the bounds of human control. They attempt to advance a theory that assumes that the water of the lake seeps into the earth once and for all. It seems a subverting act or taming the shrew to deny this reality. Is really the lake sinking?