Improving water quality through integrated water resources management

The Densu River supplies potable water to the more than 1 million people in Ghana. The water quality of the river deteriorated as a result of the fast-uncontrolled urbanization and improper waste management practices in the basin. The implications included high water treatment cost, loss of biodiversity, loss of livelihoods and income, high disease prevalence rate and water use conflicts. The Water Resources Commission of Ghana started implementing Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the basin in 2002. The major step was to establish a Densu Basin Board to coordinate activities within the basin and manage it on a holistic manner. This paper highlights the improvement in water quality as a result of activities initiated in the Densu River Basin during the past few years. The activities are ongoing; hence, the results reported here should be considered preliminary and may be enriched as new experience emerges from the Densu Basin complemented with similar interventions in other river basins.