The Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO) has taken decisive action against three major companies – Nigerian Bottling Company (producers of Coca-Cola), FrieslandCampina (makers of Peak Milk), and Guinness Nigeria Plc – for extracting large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes without proper authorization and compliance with regulations.
Eko Hot Blog gathered that Mr. Olowu Babatunde, Director of Technical Services at LASWARCO, said the commission had been engaging with these companies for over seven years in an attempt to encourage compliance, but with limited success.
As a result, LASWARCO has sealed the factories belonging to these companies as an enforcement measure.
“We operate a law that empowers us to regulate most of these heavy abstractors in Lagos State.
“Abstractors are individuals or entities that extract large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes.
“So, these companies that we have sealed, basically three of them – Coca-Cola, FreislandCampina and Guinness, abstract water in large quantities.
“And we have been engaging them over time. At least, I have been here for more than seven years now. We’ve been engaging these companies for more than seven years now.
“Some, either they do partial compliance, or some don’t comply at all. So, now that we started implementation of our regulation, we now compel them to fulfill all their regulatory demands,” he said.
The enforcement was a follow-up of a news briefing on unregulated groundwater abstraction by Mr Tokunbo Wahab, the Commissioner, Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, held on Monday.
Wahab noted that the Environmental Management Protection Law 2017 empowered LASWARCO to regulate groundwater activities and impose penalties for unauthorised abstraction.
He said that unregulated groundwater extraction could lead to serious environmental consequences, including land subsidence and groundwater contamination.
The commissioner said in 2020, the government offered a 75 per cent waiver on groundwater abstraction fees, but compliance was low.
This, he said, necessitated LASWARCO to now initiate enforcement actions against defaulters.
He said that letters were issued to non-compliant organisations with a 72-hour ultimatum to comply and penalties would be imposed on those who continued to operate without authorisation.
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