Port Harcourt
molluscs. There may be excessively high levels of the heavy metals cadmium and lead in the Bonny River.
Also, the physical impact of human settlement in addition to the associated commercial and industrial activity readily destroys the viability of the Brackish-water ecozone because of its comparatively low biodiversity. The stinking, sewage-strewn, plastic-riddled, polluted and dead mud flats along the Bonny River near Port Harcourt (many of which are now human settlement sites) were mangrove forest a few decades or even only a few years ago. Ironically there is a well-meaning but ignorant policy to sandfill most of the Brackish-water ecozone around the city. The conservation of the ecologically sensitive and valuable mangrove forests around Port Harcourt and along the Bonny Estuary is important for the health and economic well being of the city and its region, and for food such as periwinkles.
21.6 THE SURVEY LOCATIONS
ERA surveyed eight locations in Port Harcourt, including two illegal waterside settlements called Bundu and Ibadan, and legal but unplanned settlements at Rumuchida, to the north west of the city (Ikwerre road), at Diobu Mile I (Abakaliki Street), and in the Old Township (Aggrey Road). These settlements represent the condition of the great majority of the residents of Port Harcourt, being very overcrowded and unsanitary, made up of mainly one-room houses rarely more than 10 m2 in size with little space around them. Three other survey locations - a private estate in the GRA Phase III, a Federal Government estate and the servants’ quarters in a compound at Amadi Flats contrast much better conditions, representing a more fortunate minority of residents who, nonetheless, share with everyone else in Port Harcourt, a lack of piped water, erratic electricity supply, bad refuse collection, bad transport facilities, and a generally poor urban environment, as well as a certain amount of overcrowding. We did not survey the luxury housing of the Port Harcourt and Rivers State elite because this does not represent the conditions of the mass of Port Harcourt citizens, although it does take up a disproportionate area of the city's land.
The waterside settlements represent the worst living conditions in the city. Although population densities (at around 1500 persons per hectare) are not the highest, the insecurity of tenure (the ever-present threat of government clearance) encourages very bad building methods and maintenance (with notable exceptions) often using unsuitable materials, and shambolic layout patterns. Moreover, the low-lying position of the settlements, often on chicoco (the acid sulphate soils of the Brackish-water ecozone) reclamation, means that drainage is poor leading to very bad sanitation in some places and even flooding. Tens off thousands of people live in the waterside settlements forced into them by extreme poverty, and although many live hopeless lives, a number have good jobs in government and private service but are nonetheless paid grossly inadequate wages. Rents are in the region of N100 per month (1994 = ca. US$2-3) which many residents, including those in employment, find difficult to pay.
The compound at Ikwerre Road is typical of many in the city. Once it was a comparatively spacious single (often farming) family compound but has, under the pressure of demand for housing from the rapidly expanding city, become a dense agglomeration of rooms fitted into every available space housing the landlord's family and a large multi-cultural population of immigrant tenant families. In layout and room design such compounds do not differ greatly from the waterside settlements and may be even more unsanitary because human waste cannot be disposed of directly into the water. Also, being inland and often beside badly designed main roads as ribbon
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