The Kafue River Basin in the Chingola District, Zambia has experienced heavy polluting over the past several decades. Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) is the primary source of this pollution, disposing of industrial waste products and various bio-chemical substances directly into the reservoirs. They are not the only polluters, however, as the region is home to roughly 40% of the nation’s socio-economic activity; a range of other industries are also at fault for the current state of the river basin: pulp-and-paper mills, fertilizer factories, granulation plants, abattoirs, textile manufacturers, and more. More than 93,000 tons of industrial waste are produced annually, most of which finds it way into the Kafue River. From there it flows into the Zambezi River – Africa’s fourth largest – that claims Zambia as its source and winds through Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique before eventually emptying out into the Indian Ocean.

As a result of the pollution, the steadily increasing population in the Chingola District face severe water shortages. The full extent of the environmental impact has not yet been determined, but because of significant habitat destruction and land/soil degradation, the cost to local ecosystems is likely quite high. The color of the brilliantly blue Kafue River has slowly turned green. Indigenous fish have developed an unusual and unpleasant odor. Aquatic weeds dumped by some facilities into the river system, combined with nitrogen and phosphate waste from other facilities, together degrade biodiversity.

Both aquatic life and human health are in danger. High incidences of environmentally mediated disease, such as gastro-enteritis, intestinal worms, and diarrhea diseases mostly in children have been reported from communities around the river and have been linked to drinking water from certain parts of the river. The raw sewer pollution of Kafue River could inadvertently lead to outbreaks of epidemics like cholera.

Magnitogorsk in Western Russia lies on the banks of the Ural River. In the 1930's one of the largest Russian iron and steel works was established here that produced steel for half the Russian tanks during WW II. At optimum capacity it can produce up to 7.5 million tons of steel. The industry used to belch out 650,000 tons of industrial wastes, including 68 toxic chemicals, and polluted some 4,000 square miles of Russia. According to a steelworker, none of the filtering devices were in working condition.

Cherepovets, an industrial center 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow, is home to the Severstal steel plant, one of Russia’s largest steel plants. The plant was built in Soviet times and owned by the Ministry of Black Metallurgy of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In 1965, a 5,000 meter-wide “sanitary security zone” was established around the steel plant (later reduced to 1,000 meter-wide in 1992). According to a letter from the Mayor of Cherepovets dated 3 June 2004, in 1999 the plant was responsible for more than 95 percent of industrial emissions into the town’s air. According to the State Report on the Environment for 1999, the Severstal plant was the largest contributor to air pollution of all metallurgical plants in Russia.