Naku’Etum peace dam project is a presidential directive project which is a dividend for cross-border peace that is meant to emulate similar investment by the Government of Uganda in Kobebe dam which has benefited communities on both sides of the Kenya and Uganda border. The project is located in Turkana County, Loima Sub County, Lokiriama/Lorengipi Ward, in Naku’etum Village. It is intended to impound 750,000m3 of water to serve a population of 27,000 people and 242,000 livestock. Increasing access to water by the communities will reduce conflicts arising from the fight for water and foster peace between communities living in this area.

Some of the project components include:

• Construction of a 2 km access road to the dam site.
• Reservoir and dam
• Core trench and spillway channel
• 15m high embankment
• Spillway
• Intake tower, draw off and diversion culvert

The overall progress of works currently stands at over 40%. NWHSA’s Eng. David Gitau who is supervising the project says material filling and compaction is on-going for core filling at right hand side of the embankment axis. Secondly, the lab technician continues to monitor compaction for quality control, and concrete blinding for diversion culvert has been completed with   30m length of bed slab concreting. Additionally, preparation for the diversion culvert has been achieved to a total of 104m.

Last year, the Authority conducted public participation meetings as per the Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act. According to the Senior Chemist Mr. Dennis Osoro, the environment team from the Authority conducted the Environmental, Social, impact Assessment (ESIA) study and submitted the report to NEMA.
Public consultations were carried out in the project area with the following aims:

• To inform the local people and their leaders about the proposed construction of Naku’Etum peace dam and the objectives of the proposed project;
• To gather the concerns and views of the local people on the proposed project;
• To establish if the local people foresee any positive and/or negative impacts associated with the proposed dam, and suggest possible ways of mitigating negative impacts and enhancing positive impacts arising from it; and
• To identify and document the diverse socio-cultural and economic set-ups in the project area that could be potentially impacted by the project activities.