I coordinate research for Pass NetZero, an NGO based in Windhoek working with NUST on water quality and aquatic plants at Goreangab. Whenever tap water comes up here the answer is the reclamation plant, and fairly so — Windhoek was the first city in the world to reclaim sewage directly into drinking water, it's been running since 1968, and it works. The water is fine. What I find strange is that nobody ever talks about what's upstream of it, and that's the part we work on. Goreangab receives runoff and wastewater from the settlements upstream. The aquatic plants growing in it absorb nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals out of that water. It's real treatment work, happening for free, ahead of any engineered step. Nobody designed it, nobody funds it, and almost nobody measures it. Two things that surprised me when we started looking. The plants people complain about — the green mats, the stuff that makes the dam look like it's dying — are often the ones cleaning hardest. Fast growth means high nutrient uptake. But if nobody cuts them, they die back and release everything straight into the water again. Cutting matters, and nobody knows how much or when. And hardly any Namibian aquatic species have been studied for this. The uptake data doesn't exist, so there's no way to design around it. Questions for people here: Has anyone noticed Goreangab changing over the last ten years? More green cover, worse smell, different between dry and rainy season? Anyone work at or with City of Windhoek or NamWater on water quality? I'd like to know what monitoring data actually exists. Any NUST or UNAM students or graduates who've done work on water quality? We supervise student research and I'd like to know what's already been done here. Happy to share what our students have found.   submitted by   /u/Claude-hedonie [link]   [comments]