The dirty underbelly of development

By July last year, the patience of the city's sewerage engineers had reached breaking point. For years, the technicians had been pushing government for the expansion of the city's sewerage plant - a 40 million-litre per day installation whose capacity had long been overtaken by the rapid growth of Gaborone.

While the city's plans were accommodative of expanding residential areas and new commercial and industrial developments, the "dirty underbelly" of the capital appeared forgotten. Over the years, population and industrial growth had resulted in sewerage inflows rising to 55 million litres per day, pushing the seams of the 40 million-litre per day capacity of the plant.