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Kmndrew1 retweeted

4 months ago

Kampala Floods, Closed Drains, and the Punishment of Bad Design. ======= The flooding in Kampala is a complex urban problem, but it is now being reinforced by the poor drainage designs currently being implemented on city roads. I argued earlier in my letter to the KCCA Executive Director, titled KAMPALA: Where Gravity is Optional and Sewage is Freelance (https://t.co/SdOCCwZpPt), that closing storm drains in a city whose runoff carries heavy silt, solid waste, and even sewage is a technical mistake. In Kampala, drainage infrastructure must first respect the character of the flow. It must allow access, cleaning, desilting, and quick intervention. Once you close such drains in our environment, blockage is no longer a possibility. It becomes a timetable. And when the closed system blocks, the road surface itself becomes the new drainage channel. That is exactly the danger I see in sections like Kira Road in Kamwokya, from Kayunga Stage at Café Javas and City Oil to the junction with Old Kira Road descending toward Kamwokya Market. This is a long, straight urban stretch, spanning more than half a kilometer, and one must ask a very simple engineering question: how exactly is gravity supposed to work there under the new culvert-based arrangement? Water does not move because drawings were approved. It moves because gradients are real, outlets are functional, and channels remain accessible. If those conditions are weak, water will not negotiate. It will simply rise, spread, and reclaim the carriageway. The deeper problem is that many of these designs appear borrowed from cleaner and more disciplined urban systems, especially in Europe, where stormwater does not routinely come mixed with plastic waste, sewage overflow, roadside silt, and the full creativity of informal urban disposal. There, closed drainage can survive because maintenance culture is real, waste control is stronger, and service access is taken seriously. Here, copying such designs blindly is not sophistication. It is laziness disguised as modernity. It suggests designers who were either too unexposed to understand Kampala or too careless to respect it. And because our culture of infrastructure servicing is weak, the consequences will not wait long. These closed drains will choke. Maintenance teams will struggle to access them. Water will jump onto the roads. Roads will become rivers, and the same sewage-rich runoff we pretend to have buried will start entering shops, compounds, and homes. At that point, the city will not merely be facing flooding. It will be facing a recurring public health event dressed up as rainfall. This is why I keep insisting that drainage is not a beautification exercise. It is not a public relations project. It is an engineering system. Unfortunately, too often, it is being handled by people with big feet and small heads, walking heavily over decisions they do not understand. The result is that Kampala will continue to flood, not because rain is new, but because incompetence has been poured into concrete. Kampala does not need more PR campaigns after every storm. It needs drainage designs that respect gravity, respect access, and respect the ugly truth of how this city actually lives.

ApolloBuregyeya's tweet photo. Kampala Floods, Closed Drains, and the Punishment of Bad Design.
=======

The flooding in Kampala is a complex urban problem, but it is now being reinforced by the poor drainage designs currently being implemented on city roads. I argued earlier in my letter to the KCCA Executive Director, titled KAMPALA: Where Gravity is Optional and Sewage is Freelance (https://t.co/SdOCCwZpPt), that closing storm drains in a city whose runoff carries heavy silt, solid waste, and even sewage is a technical mistake. In Kampala, drainage infrastructure must first respect the character of the flow. It must allow access, cleaning, desilting, and quick intervention. Once you close such drains in our environment, blockage is no longer a possibility. It becomes a timetable. And when the closed system blocks, the road surface itself becomes the new drainage channel.

That is exactly the danger I see in sections like Kira Road in Kamwokya, from Kayunga Stage at Café Javas and City Oil to the junction with Old Kira Road descending toward Kamwokya Market. This is a long, straight urban stretch, spanning more than half a kilometer, and one must ask a very simple engineering question: how exactly is gravity supposed to work there under the new culvert-based arrangement? Water does not move because drawings were approved. It moves because gradients are real, outlets are functional, and channels remain accessible. If those conditions are weak, water will not negotiate. It will simply rise, spread, and reclaim the carriageway.

The deeper problem is that many of these designs appear borrowed from cleaner and more disciplined urban systems, especially in Europe, where stormwater does not routinely come mixed with plastic waste, sewage overflow, roadside silt, and the full creativity of informal urban disposal. There, closed drainage can survive because maintenance culture is real, waste control is stronger, and service access is taken seriously. Here, copying such designs blindly is not sophistication. It is laziness disguised as modernity. It suggests designers who were either too unexposed to understand Kampala or too careless to respect it.

And because our culture of infrastructure servicing is weak, the consequences will not wait long. These closed drains will choke. Maintenance teams will struggle to access them. Water will jump onto the roads. Roads will become rivers, and the same sewage-rich runoff we pretend to have buried will start entering shops, compounds, and homes. At that point, the city will not merely be facing flooding. It will be facing a recurring public health event dressed up as rainfall.

This is why I keep insisting that drainage is not a beautification exercise. It is not a public relations project. It is an engineering system. Unfortunately, too often, it is being handled by people with big feet and small heads, walking heavily over decisions they do not understand. The result is that Kampala will continue to flood, not because rain is new, but because incompetence has been poured into concrete.

Kampala does not need more PR campaigns after every storm. It needs drainage designs that respect gravity, respect access, and respect the ugly truth of how this city actually lives.

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