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The Lagos State Government, through its Water Regulatory Commission, has sealed three companies for extracting large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes without proper authorisation and compliance with regulations.
The three companies sealed by the government after they were discovered to have contravened its regulatory standards were Guinness Nigeria, the Nigerian Bottling Company, and FrieslandCampina, producers of Coca-Cola, as well as, Peak Milk respectively.
The Director, Technical Services, LASWARCO, Babatunde Olowu, who led the enforcement team from the agency on Tuesday, said that the move would serve as a deterrent to others across the state.
Babatunde said that LASWARCO had been engaging with these companies for over seven years to encourage compliance but efforts have been met with limited success.
“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.
As gathered, the enforcement was a follow-up of a news briefing on unregulated groundwater abstraction by the Commissioner, Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, held yesterday.
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.
