The environmental action that the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) is currently executing in Nairobi, especially along the Nairobi River, is highly commendable sending a clear signal to those with impunity if not long overdue.
The same action must also be extended to other parts of the country and executed systematically and ruthlessly without favour, fear or bias but above all else sustained with iron enforcement to give our country’s devastated environment a chance to regenerate.
It is telling that in the ongoing operations multi-billion shillings structures constructed on riparian wetlands are being brought down crumbling to rubble even as some of their owners desperately try to resort to legal battles to stop the actions to no avail.
Industrial investors who have breached the environmental impact assessment requirements and regulations, must also not be spared with a classic example being Jaswant Rai’s West Kenya Sugar Company which build a sugar factory on a critical catchment area in Busia County.
The factory which was constructed under highly questionable circumstances at Olepito area near Tangakona town on the Busia – Mumias highway lies squarely on a wetland and critical catchment area that serves River Nasira which drains into River Sio to the South.
It is an area covering more than five square kilometres which for centuries or time immemorial had never been known to be without water, however prolonged dry seasons that may come to ravage the county – it was always wet, but raging wet with water during the rainy seasons.
Then out of the blue about six years ago, a strange phenomenon of sugarcane poaching erupted and gripped the county like a cancerous sore stranglehold. Olepito became the epicenter of the vicious and sometimes deadly operations of the poachers – West Kenya bought the River Nasira wetland catchment area and quickly turned it into ”a sugarcane buying centre.”
How, why or whether the company got clearance from NEMA for environmental impact assessment are some of the most critical questions still begging for answers to this very day but no answers are forthcoming. Worse still whether it has any industrial waste treatment works as required by law?
However, there is no question that NEMA officials knew that this Olepito area was a critical wetland catchment area for River Nasira, but what is more shocking is the fact that within no time the very same area was being completely fenced off with a concrete fence topped with whirls of razor wire.
This was followed by the beginning of the construction works for a sugar factory, further raising more questions whether West Kenya the constructors of the factory had met the NEMA environmental impact assessment requirements to construct the factory at that site?
Whether the company had been given license by the Agriculture Food and Fisheries Authority (AFFA) to construct the factory at that site after strictly following the regulations governing the construction of any sugar factory in the Country?
The most critical question is that how could NEMA issue a clearance certificate to West Kenya Sugar Company if it went on the ground and established that the Olepito area is a critical wetland catchment in the Busia County’s ecological system? That is when it is obvious to a common layman that this place was indeed that?
That notwithstanding, what is clear is that there was serious breach of environmental impact assessment regulations as stipulated in the NEMA Act at this particular area which demands for immediate action from NEMA – to completely destroy this factory and restore this critical wetland catchment area to its natural functions.
If it does not matter how much the investors had ploughed into the Nairobi buildings worth billions of shillings like the Ukay Centre in Nairobi’s Westlands area that succumbed to the NEMA bulldozers and excavators into rubble what is a sugar factory constructed on a critical catchment area whose immediate and long term consequences are going to be devastating not only to the environment but also human and animal lives?
The story does not stop there, since the impunity of the same company to wreak havoc on the environment goes all the way to yet another critical environmental drainage feature that is River Sio whose sources is kilometres away on the slopes of Mt. Elgon.
West Kenya Sugar Company went ahead to construct a water pumping structure in the middle of the River’s causeway right on the River Sio bridge on the Nambale – Butula road about a kilometer from Nambale town to pump water to the very same Olepito sugar factory between seven to ten kilometres away from the River.
Even to an environmentally professionally un-trained eye, it is very clear that this structure is a threat to the environment, worse still the activities of constructing it and the pipes leading from it to the Olepito sugar factory.
Indeed the question arises whether Jaswant Rai’s West Kenya Sugar Company met the NEMA regulations as far as the environmental impact assessment is concerned before and after constructing this water pumping structure at River Sio bridge?
It also extremely critical that Busia County residents must be told whether the environmental impact assessment requirements by NEMA were met before and after the construction of this company’s sugar factory at Olepito? What were going to be the immediate and long term consequences to the environment, the people and their animals?
Whatever, the answers to these questions, what is clear to any layman is the fact that these two structure have immediate and long term devastating consequences to the environment, human beings and the animals – therefore NEMA has no option but take decisive action to destroy them all immediately before they wreak havoc with devastating and disastrous consequences and West Kenya penalized for environmental desutruction.
