The Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO) has sealed three companies for extracting large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes without proper authorization and compliance with regulations.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, the companies are Nigerian Bottling Company, producers of Coca-Cola; FrieslandCampina, makers of Peak Milk; and Guinness Nigeria Plc.
Mr. Olowu Babatunde, Director of Technical Services at LASWARCO, stated this during an enforcement operation in Lagos on Tuesday. Babatunde noted 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. These companies, basically three of them—Coca-Cola, FrieslandCampina, and Guinness—abstract water in large quantities,” he said.
Babatunde added, “We have been engaging them for more than seven years now. Some partially comply, while others do not comply at all. Now that we have started implementing our regulations, we compel them to fulfill all their regulatory demands.”
This enforcement followed a news briefing on unregulated groundwater abstraction by Mr. Tokunbo Wahab, Commissioner of the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, held on Monday. Wahab noted that the Environmental Management Protection Law 2017 empowers LASWARCO to regulate groundwater activities and impose penalties for unauthorized extraction.
He highlighted that unregulated groundwater extraction could lead to serious environmental consequences, including land subsidence and groundwater contamination. Wahab mentioned that in 2020, the government offered a 75 percent waiver on groundwater abstraction fees, but compliance remained low, necessitating LASWARCO to initiate enforcement actions against defaulters.
