Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), an NGO, on Monday urged residents of Bayelsa to stop indiscriminate disposal of human and industrial wastes in the state.
Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), an NGO, on Monday urged residents of Bayelsa to stop indiscriminate disposal of human and industrial wastes in the state.
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Mr Alagoa Morris, Head of Operations of the NGO, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the organization was disturbed by lack of sewage treatment plants and disposal system in the state.
Morris noted that the development had led to uncontrolled and indiscriminate disposal of untreated sewage and industrial wastes into water channels across the state.
He noted that discharge of untreated sewage and industrial effluents posed danger to the environment as the water channels in the state were interconnected.
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"Field monitors of the Environmental Rights Action show that because there are no approved sewage dump sites, sewage truck operators resorted to dumping sewage indiscriminately; sometimes with the approval of some unscrupulous community folks."
"One community environment where this has been going on is Opolo-Epie, at locations along the Tombia-Amassoma road and the untreated sewage and other liquid chemicals, even crude oil are dumped into swamps and other flowing bodies of water in the environment."
``Unfortunately, neither the state Sanitation Authority nor the Ministry of Environment has made any pronouncement on this negative environmental trend or taken any other positive actions to control the situation in the interest of the general public,” Morris said.
The NGO further appealed to relevant government agencies to control the activities of sewage disposal operators in the state to forestall an epidemic that would pose a threat to public health.
ERA/FoEN also called for the establishment of a sewage and refuse treatment plants to take care of the increasing human population and activities of oil and gas firms that generate oil related wastes.
It urged the state Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Sanitation Authority to urgently engage all relevant stakeholders to arrest the current trend in the interest of public health.
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