NAIROBI: Residents of Makueni county will have to wait at least a fortnight to know the exact cause of a pipeline leak which ended up spilling oil into the Thange river and contaminating key water sources in the county, the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) has said.
The firm said yesterday it has in the meantime picked environmental specialists from SGS Kenya, a National and Environmental Management Authority agency, to undertake an environmental site assessment to ascertain the extent of contamination in the area before details are made public.
SGS will also be required to conduct remedial action through further product recovery and decontamination of the affected area, after which sampling will be done by the agency to provide independent assurance of the effectiveness of the cleansing process.
It is feared that thousands of residents and hundreds of students at primary and secondary schools in the area may have contracted diseases resulting from consuming and prolonged use of the contaminated water—which from visual observation, according to the company, is a mixture of water and pinkish oil, believed to be petrol.
KPC acting managing director Florah Okoth said cleaning up the affected area is currently ongoing and about six different meetings have taken place between the firm and the local leaders on possible compensation to the affected communities which, she said, shall be done once the process expected to take about six months is completed.
“Damage is a very technical term to use but we promise to do our best since we recognise there has been advanced impact economically to the company and to the affected residents,” she said, adding that the firm is unable to quantify how much it had lost in terms of revenues from the leak.
