The Citizen<\/a> (Juba)<\/p>\n24 December 2011<\/p>\n
\neditorial<\/p>\n
A few days ago a plot owner whose residence is located east of the Regency Hotel in Tongpiny, Juba used a huge grader to move large blocks of rocks from their natural places where they were piled or stood singly at the time of creation and rolled two of them in the middle of the stream whose source is in the ministries. The grader driver without considering the adverse effects of blocking the stream just dropped the large stones across the waterway.<\/p>\n
The environmental effect of this recreated landscape will be that during rainy seasons the water flowing from upstream in the ministries will find no way to flow naturally downward as usual due to the blockade and then the water will stand still and this will affect buildings and roads upstream and cause damages to them. In the middle of the town, streams are not blocked but instead opened so that the water in them can flow fast without causing environmental problems.<\/p>\n
With that stream east of the Regency Hotel of Tongpiny closed with large blocks of black stones, the owner of the plot who has carried out that act should immediately remove the stones and arrange them along the stream instead and the owners of the buildings upstream and the ministry of environment should make sure this is done so that environmental damages are not caused to the infrastructure set up by them .<\/p>\n
Those constructing buildings are playing their roles in development but they should have some sense of conserving the environment which is a responsibility of everybody. For sure if the owner of the plot who organized the removal of the stones from their natural locations and rolling them to block the stream is near his or her plot he or she would have complained to the City Council authorities because certainly the standing water as a result of the barricade across the stream will block the stream from flowing and cause damages to his or her structures. So as we build to change the landscape of our city we should also be mindful of our action which should be friendly to the environment.<\/p>\n
Any step that we are about to take and which would result to a problem must be avoided. If the grader driver would visit the site where he had blocked the stream he would regret of his action and therefore to avert future difficulty of water not flowing but getting filled up and breaking the stream’s banks and affecting the buildings and other infrastructure like roads nearby, the plot owner who ordered the removal of the stones and their disposal in the middle of the stream should immediately bring back his grader and haul back the stones to the bank of the stream. He could even arrange them in such a way that they could form a manmade beauty along the stream.<\/p>\n
While conserving the environment, we should always think instead of causing damages by carelessly throwing stones and other materials anyhow we should be creative and form a manmade structure for our own use. We can create a site along the stream that youth can come and pass good time on it. Even adults like to see such sites and they too can come to spend some leisure time at the site. Officials of the Environment Ministry should go round and be observant where construction works are going on because people when they are not checked will always abuse the environment by creating unnecessary structures which are likely to affect us detrimentally.<\/p>\n
The other time the Minister of Environment has written an educative article which has revealed his goals to conserve environment in South Sudan and such a useful message should be seriously considered by all the people in the country when addressing issues related to environmental conservation. We should always avoid steps such as that of the plot owner who rolled blocks of stones across the stream thus preventing future flow of water.<\/p>\n
AllAfrica – All the Time<\/p>\n
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