Conserving Groundwater for Farming in Developing Countries: The Case of Mbaise, Imo State, Nigeria

Groundwater protection and management is of paramount importance in Nigeria's Niger Delta, where more than 80% of the inhabitants depend on groundwater as a source of drinking water, domestic uses, irrigation, and production of goods. Groundwater has been polluted by biological, chemical, and physical processes as a result of careless disposal and discharge of chemicals; industrial (mainly mining and petroleum) and agricultural activities and operations; and materials and structures on the earth’s surface through which contaminants percolate and seep into the soils and aquifers to contaminate the groundwater system and water supply.

In order to protect and manage the Niger Delta's groundwater system, it is wise to involve the community so as to implement certain community-based approaches, such as stakeholder participation. The community is enlightened and taught the use of microbial degradation processes to detoxify environmental contamination (bioremediation), which was first applied to petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated groundwater systems in the early 1970s. In current practice, intrinsic bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbons requires a systematic assessment to show that ambient natural attenuation mechanisms are efficient enough to meet regulatory requirements, and a monitoring program to verify that performance requirements are met.

The Niger Delta is one of the largest deltas in the world, the largest wetland in Africa, and also the third largest drainage basin in Africa. The environment is broken into four ecological zones: coastal barrier islands, mangrove swamp forests, freshwater swamps, and lowland rainforests. This is why the delta is highly polluted. Lack of community participation in the Niger Delta has been the bane on continuous groundwater contamination because the oil-contaminated sediment systems in the Niger Delta occur as a result of both point source pollution and non-point source pollution.