The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) in the Central Region has unequivocally denied complicity in the recent floods that devastated dozens of communities in and around the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem municipality and destroyed the Jukwa-Cape Coast main road. commuters are stuck.
There was massive flooding in parts of the central region on Saturday 18 June, with residents largely blaming GWCL for releasing excess water from the Brimsu Dam without warning.
However, at a media tour of its New Brimsu Waterworks facility on Monday 18 July, the company denied any involvement in the floodwaters, suggesting the dam had no spillway gates.
Nana Yaw Barima Barnie, the company's Western and Central Regional Communications Manager, told reporters that instead there was a sudden overflow of the dam between June 17 and June 18, resulting in the third highest flood in the area after July 1955 and June 1979.
According to him, the incident caught them by surprise because there was no indication that the water had drained away and therefore they could not warn residents in its catchments.
Regardless, he maintained that the overflow of the dam was not the cause of the devastation in Jukwa and the surrounding communities as they are located upstream of the dam.
“The water does not flow in the opposite direction and therefore any excess water that comes out of this dam cannot go to Jukwa Road and destroy it and so we should make allegations that Ghana Water Company was complicit in what happened on Jukwa Road. rest,” he said.
Nana Barnie indicated that the cause of the dam's sudden overflow was yet to be determined, but she suspected there may have been heavy rain elsewhere.
He noted that GWCL had always warned residents in the catchment areas of the massive spill and insisted that it was not a case of negligence on their part.
The Brimsu Dam was built in 1928 and has undergone several interventions over the years to increase its capacity.
Unlike the Weija Dam in Accra, the dam was not designed to have an escape gate.
It naturally overflows at 19 feet and could cause flooding in adjacent communities when water levels reach 32 feet.
When the team reached the site, the dam was overflowing.
The New Brimsu Water Treatment Plant, which sources raw water from the Kakum River, is the second largest water treatment plant in the Central Region after Kwanyak and is capable of producing 8.5 million gallons of treated water per day.
Mr Barnie said that to mitigate the impact of flooding in nearby communities and control incidents of intermittent water allocation, the company would begin to consider building a facility to hold excess water.
He further noted that the treatment plant did not face any problem of polluted water as Kakum river was free of galamsey and other notorious activities.
Mr George Buddy, the station manager who led the team on the tour, said the interest of the surrounding communities was paramount to the company and therefore would not act in any way to endanger their lives.
“It happened overnight and there was nothing we could do about it; we couldn't control it,” he said.
Explaining why some communities in Cape Coast are still facing a water crisis, he noted that consumption levels have exceeded the capacity of the treatment plant, adding that capacity needs to be expanded.
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