Peak Milk, Guinness, Coca-Cola Face Lagos Sanctions For Groundwater Violations
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The Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO) has sealed three major companies for extracting large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes without proper authorization and compliance with regulations.
The affected companies are Nigerian Bottling Company (producers of Coca-Cola), FrieslandCampina (makers of Peak Milk), and Guinness Nigeria Plc.
The Director of Technical Services at LASWARCO, Mr. Olowu Babatunde, disclosed this during an enforcement exercise in Lagos on Tuesday. According to him, the agency had engaged with the companies for over seven years to encourage compliance, but their efforts yielded limited results.
“We operate a law that empowers us to regulate most of these heavy abstractors in Lagos State,” Babatunde explained. “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, FrieslandCampina, 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 stated.
This enforcement followed a news briefing by Mr. Tokunbo Wahab, the Commissioner for the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, on Monday. He highlighted the powers granted to LASWARCO under the Environmental Management Protection Law of 2017 to regulate groundwater activities and penalize unauthorized usage.
Wahab warned that unregulated groundwater extraction poses severe environmental risks, including land subsidence and groundwater contamination. He noted that in 2020, the government had offered a 75% waiver on groundwater abstraction fees to encourage compliance, but the response from companies remained inadequate.
“Letters were issued to non-compliant organizations with a 72-hour ultimatum to comply, and penalties would be imposed on those who continued to operate without authorization,” Wahab added.
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