Residents of the Sunyani Municipality went without pipe-borne water for nearly a week after pollution of the Tano River linked to illegal mining disrupted supply from the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), marking the second such crisis within two months and deepening alarm over the state of the municipality’s primary water source.
The five-day outage forced households, businesses and institutions across parts of Sunyani to search for alternative water sources, rely on stored water, or buy from vendors to meet basic daily needs including cooking, bathing and sanitation. “This situation has been very difficult for families,” one resident said. “For almost a week we had no water from our taps, and we had to move around looking for water just to manage our homes.”
Sources familiar with the situation say the disruption was triggered by heavy rains that washed sediments and mining waste from lands degraded by illegal mining operations upstream in parts of the Ahafo Region into the Tano River. The influx of muddy debris is believed to have clogged sections of GWCL’s pipeline and intake systems, making it difficult for engineers to pump and treat water for distribution.
The incident is not isolated. A similar contamination episode in January this year disrupted water production in Sunyani, prompting the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat to deploy a task force in a targeted sweep of suspected illegal mining sites across parts of the Tano North Municipality, including communities such as Sukuumu, Subrisu No. 2 and Adrobaa. Officials described that exercise as a preventative operation to protect the Tano River catchment and halt the destruction of farmlands and forest reserves. Barely two months later, the river has again been compromised.
Ghana Water Limited has previously warned that siltation of major water bodies caused by galamsey is cascading economic costs across industries and threatening to push the nation toward severe supply shortages, with the company spending hundreds of millions of cedis on emergency desilting operations to keep treatment plants functional.
Efforts to obtain official comments from GWCL on the latest Sunyani disruption were unsuccessful. Community members and environmental advocates are calling for sustained enforcement and permanent protection of the Tano River basin, arguing that the fight against illegal mining has become inseparable from the challenge of securing safe and reliable water for thousands of residents who depend on the river daily.
