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Waste and Water Management: What A Trashy Affair!
The area occupied by this site was once a limestone pit but is now home to decaying domestic, industrial, medical and agricultural refuse.
How did the the Dandora Municipal Dump site come to be?
The Dandora Municipal Dumpsite was put in place by the City Council of Nairobi to hold waste generated by the (now) 3.5 million inhabitants of Nairobi.
The Dump site reached capacity long before 2004, the year it was to be decommission and to date the City Council has yet to develop and implement an alternative site or method for managing the waste generated by the inhabitants of Nairobi or its environs.
8 years were spent putting together a plan for the decommissioning of the Dandora Municipal Dump site, but conflict between the Council and the Kenya Airports Authority over the relocation of the dump site to Ruai have ground to a halt. The dump site continues to be used despite being in contravention with the Constitution of Kenya and a "raft of Laws and Court Judgements".
How has the environment been impacted?
The waste at the Dandora Municipal Dump site has polluted the soil, water and air directly affecting more than 200, 000 people in surrounding settlements of Korogocho, Babadogo, Lucky Summer and Dandora.
How have the residents of the adjacent settlements been affected?
There is evidence that people living near the dump site suffer from respiratory diseases, endocrine complications and cancer. Majority of the children in the area have heavy metal concentrations in their blood.
What does the law have to say on the matter?
The Local Government Act, Section 201, confers legal responsibility of solid waste management to the City Council of Nairobi.
The Public Health Act provides that the Council has to employ all lawful, necessary and practicable measures to keep their jurisdiction clean and sanitary to prevent occurrence of nuisance or conditions liable to be injurious or dangerous to human health.
The Environmental Management and Coordination Act (EMCA) 1999, explicitly prohibits discharge or disposal of any waste in a manner likely to cause pollution to the environment or ill health to any person. The Act prohibits, ... disposal of waste at any site not established in accordance with a license issued by the Authority ...disposal of toxic waste into or near a water resource or the atmosphere.
Despite the obvious damage to the environment and the people that live and work around the Dandora Municipal Dump site, all relevant authorities have failed to act to resolve the stalemate that prevents the City Council from moving the site, prompting it to improve its waste management practises. All of us, every one of us, continues to let the situation continue to deteriorate. We continue to let an additional 850 tonnes of waste be dumped there and still we do nothing.
What are we waiting for? How long will we let this trashy affair continue?
**All information contained in this post was pulled from the Trash and Tragedy report published by Concern Worldwide (2012). Go here to review the full report.
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