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Article

28 Aug 2019

Author:
Leonard Onyango, The EastAfrican (Kenya)

Kenya: Govt. agency shuts down four firms for polluting Nairobi River & compromising access to clean water

"Kenya regulator shuts down 4 firms for polluting Nairobi River"

Kenya's National Environment Management Authority (Nema) has shut down four companies in Nairobi’s Industrial Area for discharging life-threatening waste into Nairobi River. The companies shut include Modern Lithographic (K) Ltd, Apex Limited that manufactures paints, Thorlite Kenya Ltd and Kamongo Paper Recycling Company. According to Nema Director General Mamo B. Mamo, Kamongo Company does not have efficient waste water treatment plant. “Kamongo company has been discharging into the environment without treating their waste water to the public sewer,” said Mr Mamo. Nema officials also visited Chloride Exide company and gave them ‘improvement orders’. Nema raided the companies following an expose by Nation on pollution of Nairobi River.The two-month river pollution investigative project, dubbed “Toxic Flow”, trailed the river from Kiambu County where it starts, through Nairobi, Machakos, Makueni, Taita Taveta and Kilifi counties, until it exited into the Indian Ocean at Sabaki Bridge. 

More than 4,000 slum dwellers have encroached on its path and exploit its water for domestic and pollution-heavy commercial purposes, transforming the stream into a large open sewer. It is a dumpsite for dozens of industries dotting the city under the sun, which haul into it fresh pollutants every day. The national environment management agency is expected to continue with the inspection of high risk facilities in Industrial area on Tuesday. “As precautionary measures we will be closing down facilities that do not meet the set effluent standards,” said Mr Mamo.