Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Monitoring, Maintenance, and Management

How has the initiative been designed and implemented so that long-term needs for management and maintenance are reduced and can be met?

A maintenance team of plumbers is in place who maintain the reticulation system. The places are reserved specifically for greening the city and are not redesigned for other purposes.

The City of Bulawayo in its Policy for Urban Agriculture included the following objectives:
Objective 6.6.1A

To ensure financial resources are mobilized and made available to all urban farmers during the programme period.
Policy 6.6.1/A1

All urban farmers shall be encouraged in the first instance to mobilize their own financial resources to invest in urban agriculture. This may come from individual savings and other resources for urban agriculture.
Policy 6.6.1/A2

Financial institutions shall be encouraged to offer assistance to urban farmers in the same manner as they do to rural farmers.
Policy 6.6.1/A3

City Council shall prepare annual budgets for funding urban agriculture and source additional funding from partners, donors and government, as well as financial institutions to augment its own resources.
Policy 6.6.1/A4

All funds from external sources to be pooled together in one account specifically for Urban Agriculture and the account to be managed by City of Bulawayo.

What protocols are in place to facilitate monitoring of results?

To ensure that the effluent from the treatment plants complies the in-place standards, fully equipped Lab and qualified personnel based in Throngrove treatment works take samples from the respective reclamation plants on weekly bases and produce reports. This exercise also helps to monitor the quality of the effluent before discharging the treated wastewater to the environment and also monitor plants performance as a whole and play a very pivotal role in the success of the green city initiative. The Environmental Management Agency also work with the City Council for monitoring of effluent quality from the treatment works.

How has the initiative been enhanced in response to monitoring of results?

Environmental applications of water reuse in the city include river recharging e.g umguza river for the express purpose of improving conditions for aquatic life.  For areas such as Umguza farm and gumtree plantation water reuse for ecological enhancement is a beneficial option because reclaimed water is used to augment streamflows.

Due to the increase in the number of residents in the city, the Southern Areas Sewerage Treatment (SAST) is currently undergoing renovation to increase its capacity and efficiency.
Over the years we’ve seen the implementation of newer technologies moving from the Biofilter systems to more efficient Biological Nutrient Removal systems (BNR) in an effort to deal with large inflows a without compromising the quality of effluent. Thorngrove treatment works is planned for rehabilitation to effectively treat the wastewater as some industries around the area have been issued penalties after being discovered to deposit untreated industrial wastewater into the treatment work therefore it is on plane to rehabilitate and modify the treatment plant to accommodate industrial waste treatment.