New footage shows a brown River Ankobra meeting the sea, weeks after it was declared cleared

Brown water pouring into a blue Atlantic Ocean. That is what a video filmed at 7am on 19 October 2026 shows at the mouth of the River Ankobra in the Western Region.

The footage was posted on X by content creator Scanty and passed 89,000 views within about three hours. The bridge in the video is the Ankobra bridge at Sanwoma, on the Takoradi to Elubo road, which joins Nzema East to Ellembelle. Beyond it are a sandbar and the sea. Everything the river carries from upstream ends up there.

What the government says

On 3 September, Lands Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah patrolled the Ankobra. He said the river had been "cleared" of "thousands of Changfan machines" and that "we are turning the corner". He said what he saw did not support claims that pollution was getting worse, and that operations must continue for the river to "fully recover".

That patrol covered 16 kilometres, from Dominase to Gwira Banso. The river is about 190 kilometres long.

In August, 19 operations were carried out in the Western Region, 11 of them on the Ankobra. On 11 September, Operation Water Shield named the Ankobra as one of six rivers to protect. On 13 October, President John Dramani Mahama said soldiers would stay in nine forest reserves. He said young people and some chiefs have resisted the operations, and that forest guards have been fired on and some have died.

What the science says

A University of Cape Coast study of the Ankobra estuary, published in PLOS ONE in 2025 from samples taken between December 2020 and June 2021, found mercury in riverbed sediment at 13.02 milligrams per kilogram. The high-risk benchmark is 0.71. Mercury and lead in the water were above US EPA guidelines, and mercury was found in fish.

Turbidity, a measure of how cloudy water is, averaged between 128.5 and 405.1 units at the study's stations. A clear river is usually under 10, according to the USGS, and WHO guidance for drinking water is under 5.

The claims online

The Ankobra has been cleared: missing context. Machines were removed, but the patrol covered 16 of the river's 190 kilometres, and the minister himself said operations must continue for it to fully recover.

It is getting worse: not proven. The estuary was already highly turbid when it was sampled in 2020 and 2021. The footage shows brown water now. One video cannot show a trend.

Sixty per cent of water bodies are polluted by galamsey: misleading. The CSIR-Water Research Institute says about 60 per cent of Ghana's water bodies are polluted. Its scientist, Dr Franklin Obiri-Nyarko, named agriculture, industry and households alongside mining, and called illegal mining "a major contributor".

Protests in Accra: no evidence. The line came from an AI summary on X. QMS found no galamsey protest in Accra in October.

The Ankobra is polluted: supported. The published study, with samples taken up to June 2021, found mercury far above the benchmark.

Every government

In May 2021, President Nana Akufo-Addo endorsed burning excavators and told critics to go to court. In 2013, a task force deported foreign miners. Galamsey continued under both. Mr Buah is the MP for Ellembelle, the constituency on one side of the bridge in the footage.