The Korle Lagoon in Distress: The Stress of Urban Solid Waste on Water Bodies in Accra,

Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: Human activities on the Korle lagoon have had considerable effects on the water quality and the aquatic life therein. The rapid population growth and its attendant high waste generation, cost of disposal, depletion of landfill space and the difficulty of obtaining new disposal sites have been the major constrains thwarting the effective management of waste in Ghana. This paper examines the water quality of the Korle lagoon through a full physico-chemical analysis and buttressed with secondary data and field observations. The results show variously, the different levels of contamination of certain pollutants such as heavy metals and eutrophic elements. The high dominance of chloride over other elements indicates high domestic activity influences. PO4, NH3 and Na levels also exceeded their acceptable levels. However, levels of other metal investigated (Cu, Zn, Fe and Cd) were all below the maximum levels of the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana and the World Health Organization guidelines. For the sustainable management of the lagoon, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency should evolve sanitation programmes particularly on proper waste management mechanisms as well as propagate these measures through environmental education and stringent regulatory measures