Clean-up exercise beneficial to country

Over the last several months, Kenya Pipeline Company has been grappling with an ecological challenge that has captured the country’s attention.

In May 2015, an accidental leakage occurred in the company’s Mombasa-Nairobi oil pipeline in Thange area of Kibwezi in Makueni County and oil seeped through into River Thange and the adjacent areas, affecting the environment.

When this occurred, our response team successfully repaired the defect and an immediate appraisal and monitoring of the pipeline section confirmed there was no further leakage. Since then, site inspections and continuous monitoring of the entire pipeline have been intensified to avert a similar occurrence.

As we search for a comprehensive strategy to remove the product that is trapped underground, the accident has provided us with useful lessons.

KPC conducted through SGS, a NEMA-approved world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification laboratory, an environmental mapping and sampling of the area to establish the migration and pathways of the oil spill and the extent of contamination.

In addition, clinical examinations and medical sampling of selected local residents have been done to establish if their health has been affected.

The sum and substance of these measures that KPC has taken to arrest the impact of this oil spillage are in conformity with a Restoration Order that we received from the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) dated December 17, 2015 that requires us to clean the environment.

It is in this light that today, we are launching an environmental clean-up exercise in Thange. Kenyans should note that KPC is not just carrying out this exercise because one of its core values is care for the environment.

It is indeed a constitutional requirement as enshrined in Article 42 of the Constitution of Kenya.

This environmental restoration exercise will be carried out by EnviroServ Waste Management, an international company with a long and diverse history that has grown to become Africa’s largest and best known waste management company.

EnviroServ’s strong credentials are known in several countries in Africa and Middle East; South Africa, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, and Qatar in the Middle East among others where they have provided hazardous waste management services with the cardinal aim of restoring the environment.

Their latest assignment was the removal and disposal of hazardous redundant chemicals for Baker Hughes in Uganda.

The assignment that EnviroServ is embarking on in Thange constitutes a major remediation and chemical removal work that will last for about one year. Typical of clean-ups occasioned by spillages such as the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill in the US and the 2012 Niger Delta oil spill in Nigeria, the Thange River oil spillage clean-up presents valuable lessons for the country as far as environmental restoration is concerned.

The clean-up exercise will kick off with a treatment procedure involving a remediation process whereby contaminated water will be pumped from existing wells located on the natural geological sink adjacent to Thange River.

This contaminated water will go through an oil-water separator. Once the ground water level is adequately lowered, a new extraction well will be dug and the pumping activities will be moved to the new extraction well.

After lowering the ground water sufficiently, a cut trench for the underground dam will be dug. With the extraction well operational, the cut trench work will be completed using bentonite enhanced GCL and HDPE, an internationally accepted procedure.

On the other hand, it will be critical that the affected soil is adequately cleaned up. The contaminated soil will be treated in situ using a bio-remediation process using microbes. In some areas where there will be small areas of contamination, the soil will be removed and be bio-remediated in windrows. In the event of heavy metal content or presence of high levels of persistent organic pollutants, the soil will be removed and properly disposed as per the NEMA regulations.

As this exercise kicks off, KPC will continue to engage with all stakeholders, mainly the local community, local leaders, government agencies, media, and civil society to ensure that the Thange River environment is fully restored in close consultation with NEMA to enable the local residents lead productive lives.

With this collaborative approach, there will be regular meetings with the local community and other stakeholders for briefing on the progress of this exercise.

Meanwhile, the company continues to provide clean water to the affected people until the completion of the restoration exercise as necessary maintenance of the pipeline is undertaken pending its replacement by a new line before the end of this year.

The new pipeline will ensure continued security of supply while mitigating further petroleum products spillages and environmental impact.