Niono, Mali

Niono's collector pond is a noxious mix of excess water, garbage and human waste.

The Problem

The town of Niono is in dire need of a sanitation management system. A naturally created gully runs through the center of town and becomes entirely saturated/inundated during the rainy season.  For many years, a pumping mechanism emptied and distributed the water from the collector.  In 1998, the pump broke.  Now, the collector is a noxious mix of excess water, town garbage, household runoff, and human waste.  All of this exists right in the center of town.  The result is not just an eyesore, it is also the perfect breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.  Malaria is the most prevalent disease in Niono.  It is EWB's hope that addressing the standing noxious water problem will result in a healthier community with a reduced malaria rate. 

Niono Reborn - Artist Michael Eade

The Solid Waste Management Project

The collector needs to be cleaned out and the areas surrounding the collector need a waste management program to prevent this problem from occurring again. Once this clean-up is complete, the NGO ALPHALOG is willing to transfer these clean-up and solid waste management practices to the community.

The Niono Storm Water Management Rehabilitation Project

Niono also needs a system for handling storm water runoff in order to prevent stagnant water from pooling in the town

EWB-RMP goal is to develop a sustainable and complete overhaul approach to Niono's storm water management system.  The project design will ensure that there will be little to no negative impacts on the surface water and shallow groundwater water balance from performing project tasks.

• The first step will be to perform a site investigation and assessment, including collection of existing hypsography and hydrographic data within the town limits of Niono and performing a thorough research of available data. Until more data is collected, there is not one clear solution to this problem. It may be best to replace the pump and create canals to bring all rain water to the collector. Another possible solution is to divert all the rain water (assuming it was clean) into the canals, or have some sort of rain water harvesting program implemented. Other possible solutions may include galvanizing the collector and its feeding “gutter” to prevent further erosion; fixing the pump so that excess water is pumped out into the outlying grass marshes so that it can evaporate; grading and building retaining walls so that water in the collector and the “gutter” do not enter the town’s canals and drinking water systems, or the possible redesign of the entire runoff drainage system in the town.

The project team will have to work with the community of Niono to develop a feasible and appropriate solution.

The trash filled rainwater collector

The rain collector during the rainy season.

Further Details about Niono

Safe drinking water in the town comes from deep-drilled Saudi pumps; however wells in family concessions have a very high water table and are easily contaminated. The canals are about 8 feet wide and 8 feet deep; they have a slow current flow. Sewers line each street in the town and run by gravity into ditch drains that flow into the collector. Thus, the collector and its feeding “gutter”, (which runs through the center of the town), formed naturally over the years during heavy rains.

In recent years the collector has become so large that it is infiltrating the canal system, which is fed by a dam in the Niger River, 80 kilometers south in Markala. The terrain is flat, and Niono sits in a low and level area which was an ancient tributary of the Niger, which allows the water from the dam to flow north toward Niono and beyond.

The broken collector pump

The project is necessary because the current sanitation situation in Niono is very dangerous to the health of the community. The canal water is clean and supports fish from Markala to the outskirts of Niono, but due to infiltration from the stagnant collector water, in the center of Niono the water is filthy. In the canals people wash clothes with toxic soaps, and bathe. Further, throughout the year the collector has become a dumping area for household waste, which in the dry season is unsightly. However, in the rainy season, the overflowing sewers that run into the collector create a lethal combination of garbage, sewage, and dead animal carcasses, posing serious serious health risks from infection, transmittable diseases, viruses, parasites, poisoning, schistomasis, and due to the standing water, furthering the spread of malaria, the most prevalent disease in Niono. Cholera has been a problem as well at times.

Niono has electricity, and large machinery can be obtained for grading and hauling of materials. Local building materials such as cement, rebar, and tole metal for roofing can all be found in Niono, and ordered from Segou and Bamako.

Although most houses are made of mud bricks, many in Niono are mud brick covered with cement, and the more affluent citizens have cement houses, made with cement, cement blocks, and rebar.