Using nature to our advantage

TAMPERING with nature always brings a side effect.
While development at Port Moresby’s Harbour City reclaimed land area is pretty impressive, there appears to be a darker side.
While the land reclamation has been advancing into the sea, it has impeded the free flow of sea water into and out of the Hanuabada area.
More detailed studies need to confirm this, but the villagers themselves have been complaining of a shift in tide levels. Tide levels nearest to the reclaimed area are very high. Where once the tide would rise only to a certain degree, and then level off, now inhabitants are complaining of the tide rising up to cover the road and children’s play areas.
Homes, which have been built above high water level, are now in danger of or actually are taking on water through the floors.
The tide is depositing dirt, effluent and raw sewerage in areas where children normally play, so that there is a tremendous health risk developing. With the threat of cholera still hanging over the city, and in crowded areas like this village, the health risk is very real and quite acute.
Hanuabada and many other villages on the fringes of the capital city have grown too big for nature to absorb waste produced in the village.
While there are garbage disposal systems in many of these villages, as much garbage are just dumped over the side of the houses as they are put into garbage containers. One only has to see the filth floating in the sea to know the truth of this statement.
Of course, the villagers alone cannot be blamed for a fault that belongs to the entire city population.
Drains empty so much filth, including plastic bags, into the sea every time there is a bit of rain. We have to admit it. Port Moresby residents are a filth and trashprone population, and we do not seem to learn.
In the villages, there is an added problem. Sewerage in many places is disposed directly into the sea. While the sea’s natural action could, at one time, absorb a certain amount of natural and mostly biodegradable waste, many villages have now grown far too big and the population has become too large.
With developments such as the land reclamation at the Harbour City, and other seafront developments further impeding sea action, the danger becomes more acute.
The danger is equally acute to marine life in the harbour and further away from the amount of plastics that are being carried out to sea. Fish and other marine life get attracted to the plastics and get dangerously entangled in them, often suffocating themselves.
Various studies conducted on water quality around the harbour and Ela Beach area have confirmed that the sea is teeming with dangerous levels of coliforms, helminth eggs and other dangerous bacteria and pathogens.
Every person who takes a swim at Ela Beach does so at his or her own risk. This is a pity, considering that the beach is centrally located and happens to be both safe and accessible.
It is time that the Motu Koita Assembly and the National Capital District Commission take urgent action.
Villages such as Tatana, Hanuabada, Koki, Gabutu, Kilakila and others further along the coast need far more stringent management of wastes and for city governments to start planning for the installation of proper sewerage treatment and disposal systems. The need is urgent and action has to be taken now rather than later. It is the health of the people that we are concerned about and an epidemic in any one of them can spread throughout the city inside a week.
High quality and affordable sewerage and water treatment systems exist presently which are being used all over the world in  selected communities such as villages, mining camp sites, military camps and in hotels and resorts.
Port Moresby, with its prolonged dry season and water shortages, needs to start looking seriously at such systems so that treated water  from the sewerage can be re-used for irrigation, landscaping or in toilets while treated waste can be used for fertiliser.
This is not a pipedream.
The technology is available and used in many different parts including neighbouring Australia and Indonesia.