Eskinder Yousuf Omar was born and grew up in around Haramaya Lake. He remembers the lake in its former glory. He used to take a boat for a ride and fishing. “When the lake dried up, we felt as if we lost our mothers and fathers,” he says. As months of heavy rain brought the lake back to life, Eskinder has started constructing a boat to have fun mucking about on the water, as he used to when he was a child.
The country has had its wettest rainy season in years, and Haramaya Lake, found in the agricultural valley in Hararge, Eastern Oromia region, has risen again. The water level has risen by 61 percent, something significant for the body of water that was completely dried up two decades ago. “The abundant rains this year in the country has enabled many lakes, streams, and rivers to slowly rise, including Lake Haramaya, Teshome Seyoum, Assistant Professor of Hydraulic Engineering, and Water Resource Management of Haramaya University said. However, this is not the first time that the Lake held water since it dried up twenty years ago, he said. It was briefly filled up two years ago following the spell of rains, Teshome recalled. The reason why the lake went dry was the peasants in the area had pumped too much water from the lake, he says. “Much of that water was being removed much faster than it could be replenished,” the Associate Professor explains.
The Lake could be revived if proper water management is put in place. “There has been a huge discrepancy between the water that entered the surface and the amount of water that was pumped,” he says.
The lake is currently is swollen by rain but a long term revival of the lake needs strict rules and regulation in the sharing of the water resource, the expert says. If farmers in the area continue to divert lake water to their farmland and irrigation withtout limits, the lake’s sustainability would be put into question, said the Associate Professor. And there has to be a responsible body that could monitor that, he says.
Part of the solution is to help farmers to adopt water-saving irrigation technology, according to Teshome. Community participation in the demarcation of boundaries of the lake is crucial to sustaining the water body, he says.
On the other hand, in order to revive Lake Haramaya, experts say that 15,000 hectares of land needs to be developed in order to control the amount of sediment entering into the subsurface system and to allow water to flow into the lake. Encouraging people to plant trees and greater awareness of the importance of trees in protecting the environment is also crucial, Associate Professor Teshome says. (Translated from BBC Amharic.)
