The looming danger-fuel stations take over wetlands

A GNA Feature by Anthony Bells Kafui Kanyi

Ho, March 22, GNA -It stinks yet many can't smell it. It

is glaring yet many seemed not to notice it. Environmental experts are mute on it; disaster managers

have turned blind eyes to it while people of influence and

cash rapidly destroy the environment to serve their business

interests. It has everything to do with the destruction of wetlands

and water bodies for development projects. The fastest growing business in Ghana currently is the

establishment of fuel filling stations. This is perhaps due to the discovery of oil in

commercial quantities in some parts of the country,

prompting a rush to develop fuel filling stations even on

wetlands. The failure of authorities to protect the environment and

to ensure public safety seemed to have encouraged the

illegality as the practice is gradually expanding and taking

root. The practice is for desperate businessmen to talk

landowners into releasing those lands to them. In the southern part of the Volta Region - Aflao and

Denu precisely - landowners have sold large plots of

wetlands to dealers in the fuel station business. These

businessmen filled the wetlands with gravel and other

materials and turned the swampy beautiful evergreen

wetlands into concrete. The invasion of these natural water bodies by fuel

business hawks is dealing a killer blow to their flora and

fauna, which are vital to human existence and the health of

other ecosystems. It is also denying streams and rivers in those areas

organic material such as leaves that make up the waterway's

greatest resource of nutrients. In fact beyond carbon storage, wetlands provide a

range of environmental services including water filtration

and storage, erosion control, a buffer against flooding,

nutrient recycling, biodiversity maintenance, aesthetic and

recreational enjoyment, provide habitat and critical refuge

for countless species such as nursery for fisheries. It is for these and other reasons that authorities must

act now. Togbe Akliku Ahorney II, the Volta Regional Director of

the Environmental Protection Agency, said 93Wetlands can

be developed when there is a pressing need" but expressed

worry over the concentration of such structures in the

Denu/Aflao area. But the question is who determines what a pressing need

is and are filling stations pressing needs? It is time to refrain from destroying the balance in nature

which only opens the flood gates to disasters. Let us not forget that building in waterways and wetlands

constitutes one of the major causes of flooding in many

parts of Ghana. Speaking at an international wetlands conference in Brazil

in 2008 UN Under Secretary-General Konrad Osterwalder,

said 93People have unwittingly considered wetlands to be

problems in need of a solution, yet wetlands are essential to

the planet's health 97 and with hindsight, the problems in

reality have turned out to be the draining of wetlands and

other 'solutions' we humans devised." Many water resources are no more and the few in

existence have been reduced to gutters. It is clear that some years to come; children would not

know how pleasurable it is to bath in streams and dams, or

what rivers, seasons, flowers and forests are. Sometimes I wonder where I would get my drinking

water from should the tap be closed for two weeks. The last time the tap was closed for three days at a

residential area in Ho, the Volta Regional capital, it was hell

for the inhabitants. Public officials and policy makers in the municipality

who have turned blind eyes to the destruction of the

ecology had to compete with the rest of the people for

water from a forgotten stream for domestic use for the

period that the taps were dry. It is time environmental NGOs and concerned individuals

rise up to protect the environment. We must not forget the saying that 91When the last tree

dies, the last man dies".