The Water Problem in Bougainville

Water is a vital necessity of life. Without water our body cannot last for a day, but today this resources as being ignorantly abused by many people. Population growth and other factors causes harm or pollution to our water systems.

The mainland Bougainville island is, as we know, is so blessed with wild rivers but their daily volume by observation is decreasing because of deforestation from gardening and so on. Forests preserve soil moisture which is the main source of our water cycle. Moisture builds on to trickles; this further turn into streams, then to rivers we see and enjoy the moment we hear the brawling.

There are certain signs that I see today, that shows that a river is not normal. A river that is abnormal, floods so fast with just a little rain. Its flooding water has high content of mud and other materials and are very destructive; but, in easing, these rivers or streams are so quick. On the other hand, a natural river is so slow to flooding because the forest will be absorbing the first few drops of rain; and it takes time for natural rivers to cease the nature of flooding since the forest will again take time to release all its water content to its natural levels.

With this, Bougainville's most river systems are today, are all affected; only are very few are in their natural stages. This few, can only be identified in less populated areas in the west side of the island, especially in Eivo, Torokina and few other areas.

In other areas, where water should have remained chaste, today, alluvial gold mining is affecting water systems. In most areas of Central Bougainville, especially, the village of Kupe the sources of water in the mountainous Crown Prince Range has been polluted with chemicals and mud from the continuous operations of the gold panning and settlement. And the main village have piped in water from safer distances. This is also a grave danger to the town populace of Arawa that heavily depends on the Bovong river that comes from the Kupe area.

To the rest of Bougainville, the Buka islanders in the north are, as I had been witnessing, very good users of water. This is because their part of Bougainville lacks water depending on the type geographical make-up. To them, a bucket of tank water some how can do the whole family kitchen cleaning.

Bougainvilleans have now a challenge to manage and preserve water for the generations to come. With concerns over the resettlement of our Cateret islanders, and other problems, water management is one grave worry I have that's worth addressing by the leadership in government to the irresponsble village people and their leaders.