Sasumua Dam Catchments area is the second largest water source for Nairobi. Constructed in 1956, Sasumua dam has the capacity to hold when full, 16 million cubic meters of water. At this time of the year, Sasumua Dam holds about 7 Million cubic meters of water. This January though, due to the continued destruction of the catchments and the drought that is currently being experienced, Sasumua only has 4.3 million Cubic Meters of water. The effect it being felt in all those areas North of Waiyaki way served by the catchments including Lavington, Kileleshwa, Hurlingham, Westlands, Ngong Road, Langata, Ngumo among others!
This important 250 acre catchments area, located just 95 kilometers from Nairobi on the base of the AberdaresRanges is in dire need of rehabilitation as an urgent National Duty.
We want to begin this major initiative on Saturday 16th May 2009 and plan to rehabilitate 10 hectares of land before the end of the year. We want to have children as the major drivers of this initiative and are in the process of inviting school groups from Nairobi and around Njabini to work with us in the programme. We are also working with the local communities from whom we shall procure our seedlings, labor for the ground preparation and whose partnership we shall require to ensure that we achieve at least a 95 % survival rate of all the seedlings that we shall plant.
Our target for the month of May was 3000 cedar, cypress and bamboo seedlings (calculated at the standard 1000 seedlings per hectare) which are the trees that had were growing originally on this one site that we want to reforest.
The project successfully began on 16th May 2009. We were able to plant the 3,000 seedlings in partnership with pupils from Rose of Sharon Academy off Ngong Road, Nairobi Pentecostal Church in Woodley, students from St. Elizabeth Boy’s High School in Karen and Staff from the Co-operative Bank of Kenya Shares Department.
