The Lagos State Water Regulatory Commission (LASWARCO) has sealed three companies for extracting large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes without proper authorisation and compliance with regulations.

The three companies are Nigerian Bottling Company, Coca-Cola producers, FrieslandCampina, Peak Milk makers and Guinness Nigeria Plc.

Olowu Babatunde, director of technical services at LASWARCO, said this during an enforcement on Tuesday in Lagos.

Mr Babatunde said LASWARCO had engaged with these companies for over seven years to encourage compliance, but efforts have been unsuccessful.

“Abstractors are individuals or entities that extract large quantities of groundwater for commercial purposes.

“So, these companies that we have sealed, basically three of them – Coca-Cola, FreislandCampina and Guinness, abstract water in large quantities,” said Mr Babatunde.

He said the companies either comply partially or do not despite engagements for more than seven years.

“Some, either they do partial compliance, or some don’t comply at all. So, now that we started the implementation of our regulation, we now compel them to fulfil all their regulatory demands,” Mr Babatunde said.

The enforcement followed a news briefing on unregulated groundwater abstraction by Tokunbo Wahab, the Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, on Monday.

Mr Wahab noted that the Environmental Management Protection Law 2017 empowered LASWARCO to regulate groundwater activities and impose penalties for unauthorised abstraction.

He said unregulated groundwater extraction could lead to serious environmental consequences, including land subsidence and groundwater contamination.

The commissioner said that in 2020, the government offered a 75 per cent waiver on groundwater abstraction fees, but compliance was low.

He said this necessitated LASWARCO to initiate enforcement actions against defaulters.

Mr Wahab said letters were issued to non-compliant organisations with a 72-hour ultimatum to comply, and penalties would be imposed on those who continued to operate without authorisation.

(NAN)