Pollution menacing Lake Victoria: Quantification of point sources around Jinja Town, Uganda

Abstract

Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest tropical freshwater lake, important as a source of drinking water and as a source of food for the population in the surrounding region. Due to increased human activities in agriculture and industry during the past decades a continuously increasing inflow of agricultural runoff has been observed, and lately there have also been increased discharges of municipal effluents and industrial wastewater into Lake Victoria. This paper summarises the results of a oneyear (1997 to 1998) environmental and ecological study of industrial wastewater point sources in the Jinja (Uganda) catchment area. Main industries concern food processing, textile, leather and paper production and metallurgy. One fish-filleting factory showed the highest annual nutrient loads with 0.13 t NO 3-N, 0.20 t NH 4-N and 0.77 t PO 4-P, while another disposed of annual loads that amounted to 0.10 t NH 4-N and 0.49 t PO4-P. From food-processing industries, the highest annual load of organic matter (COD) discharged to the lake amounted to 36.8 t.

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