Cover quarries to avert environmental hazards

A girl jumps across a stream of raw sewerage in Kware, Embakasi East, March 26, 2024. [Kanyiri Wahito, Standard]

Just mention "quarry" today and gory images of corpses recently found in Nairobi's Pipeline come to mind. Indeed, worse cases have been reported before.

Abandoned quarries have provided room for youth with income-generating activities such as car wash. Some quarries are picnic and swimming destinations, a source of water for irrigation and other opportunities.

But they have claimed animals and people who slip or are pushed in there. For some, they have been a place of choice for suicide, dumping and as witnessed recently, place to discard murder victims.

Kenya's rapid urbanisation and infrastructure development have necessitated extraction of building materials, creating pits and quarries. Areas such as Kajiado, which harbour multiple cement factories, risk the many sights of abandoned quarries, as many may exhaust them and move on without rehabilitating. While growth in buildings and roads is necessary, it must not come at such high and longer-lasting costs. As of 2022, the National Environmental Management Authority talked of more than 300 abandoned quarries countrywide. Yet there are land use and planning policies that govern extraction. Quarrying activities lead to significant deforestation and land degradation.

NEMA reported that more than 5,000ha of forest land were lost to quarrying between 2015 and 2020. Deforestation fuels climate change, undermining efforts to combat global warming through mitigation. Without vegetation cover, soil erosion is unavoidable.

Abandoned waterlogged quarries create breeding grounds for mosquitoes and increase risk of waterborne diseases. They also harbour pollutant heavy metals and where uncontrolled waste dumping happens, such poisons find their way into nearby boreholes or pots. Dry quarries are a source of dust particles inhaled by people, causing respiratory problems. We may ask who is responsible for the ugly quarries, but we shouldn't when leaders sit in offices and stare at relevant policies without implementing them. The national and county governments are custodians of land use plans. They issue licences before any extraction work begins.

If regulations are adhered to, quarry operators would rehabilitate them after use through reforestation or filling them with safe materials. If the communities around these quarries knew their rights, they would fight for them. Building their capacity and involving them in planning and rehabilitation of quarries is therefore key as they are the primary victims of quarry disasters.

It would be insensitive to ask for further research on quarries, as many institutions, including state universities, have laid bare long-term impacts of abandoned quarries and shared effective rehabilitation strategies.

It beats logic that such research reports gather dust on library shelves while government agencies, learning institutions, and environmental organisations ponder on beneficial quarry rehabilitation practices, but do little to change the status quo.

Even with moneyed cartels, stricter enforcement of safety and environmental regulations in construction and quarrying sectors must happen. If the law requires regular inspection and heavy fines for non-compliance, their abandonment only means some people's hands are oiled to look the other way as rogues profiteer. Corruption should be treated as a capital offence, since a life lost in these quarries is one too many.

The development journey should not enable environmental degradation, health risks, and crime. We must reclaim abandoned quarries and transform them into beacons of sustainable development. If existing environmental laws are weak, review and strengthen them. The government must act, and fast.

-The writer advocates for climate justice. [e-mail]