LASG Decries Inadequate Land For Wastewater Treatment Plants

Kazeem Ugbodaga

The Lagos State Government says inadequate land is one of the major challenges inhibiting the sitting of several wastewater treatment plants in the Lagos metropolis.

Speaking at  one day training workshop on design of wastewater treatment facilities at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, Ikeja in Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, the Coordinator, Lagos State Wastewater Management Office, LSWMO, Engr. Nurudeen Shodeinde said the high level of urbanisation had left little or no space to site enough wastewater treatment plants across Lagos to meet the needs of the entire population.

“You have little rural areas in Lagos and to land a wastewater treatment plant, you need land and hardly can you see this land to site plants. Plants are sited with industrial approach and you need big land for that purpose. What we are doing now is to adopt smaller cluster approach,” he explained.

He added that funding was another constraint as it cost much to site a wastewater treatment plant, saying that the government had lots of demands to cater for, but noted that government was committed to sitting up treatment plants across the state to treat wastewater before discharging it into the Lagoon.

Shodeinde said his office had been sensitising the public through jingles as some people were now getting to know the importance of wastewater treatment plants, adding that government was not stopping at only sensitising the people, but also providing the technology to site plants in the state.

Head, Public-Private Partnership, PPP, LSWMO, Ayodeji Awolesi emphasised the fact that inadequate land is hindering the setting up of plants across the state as the state was a late starter in implementing the waste management plan.

“Lagos has about 30 percent landmass and because we are late starter, we don’t have enough land to set up wastewater treatment plants. We are looking at clusters, that is we want to ensure that places like schools, hospitals have their own wastewater treatment plants in their premises,” he said.

Special Adviser to the Governor on the Environment, Dr. Taofeek Folami said government was striving to ensure that people keyed into government’s plan to have wastewater treatment facilities in their domains.

He lamented that most houses in the metropolis still relied on the use of septic tank which more or often lead to pollution of the environment with wastewater, disclosing that government was trying to divide the state into 10 different areas and plan temporary wastewater treatment plants for them.