Hundreds of residents of Syokimau, Machakos County, have sued the environment watchdog Nema in a fresh twist on their longstanding dispute with Endmor Steel Millers Ltd, a metal smelting company whose factory residents accuse of air and noise pollution.
The factory has operated for the last five years, a period characterised by complaints about noise and air pollution by more than 1,200 members of the Syokimau Residents Association.
Nema, residents say, has been looking the other way as the factory pollutes the environment with noise and toxic gases, which include nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, particulate matter and carbon monoxide.
They are pleading with the Environment and Land Court in Machakos to compel Nema to carry out assorted tests to determine whether the factory’s noise and air emissions are within permissible levels.
The applicants have listed Endmor Steel Millers and the National Environment Complaints Committee as first and second interested parties respectively.
“The noise and air emissions from the factory of the first interested party has currently reached unbearable proportions to the residents living near the factory who comprise the applicants and members of the 1st interested party and it is imperative on an urgent basis for the respondent to carry out tests with regards to stack emissions, ambient air quality emissions, and noise to determine if they are within the permissible levels,” reads a section of the pleadings in the suit filed on Thursday and certified as urgent.
This is not the first time Endmor Steel Millers has been in trouble over pollution. The company has on several occasions been in Nema’s crosshairs.
But the management maintains that the company operates responsibly and that its emissions are within permissible levels, to the chagrin of locals, who link a spike in respiratory diseases and deaths in the area to the factory.
At the height of the outcry last year, Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua ordered the factory shut and announced that his administration would suspend the company’s operating license.
He said the factory would remain closed until management installed clean production systems that would make it stop polluting the environment.
However, it did not take long before the factory roared back to life after Dr Mutua’s administration gave it the green light.
A month later, in August, the National Environment Tribunal (Net) ordered the factory closed for a week following an application to that effect by Nema.
The tribunal ruled that the closure was meant to allow Nema and the factory to agree “on the methodology of assessments of air quality at the facility. The two parties to submit a report to the tribunal by 4th September 2020”.
The tribunal directed Nema to “carry out further tests to ensure that there is compliance to the law” when it ruled on the matter six months ago.
However, Nema is yet to act on the orders. Instead, the agency told the tribunal on March 3 that it needed more time to procure an accredited laboratory to carry out the measurements, raising suspicion among residents.
