BY EBELE ORAKPO

NO doubt land is a very essential commodity. Little wonder people would readily go to war if they feel there is a trespassing on their land. While some regions are blessed with abundant land mass, others are not so lucky and so they employ such methods as land reclamation. In some urban centres like Lagos, land has been reclaimed from the ocean and former dump sites for other useful purposes like construction of residential and commercial buildings. Experts have, however, warned on the inherent dangers if not properly handled.

One that easily comes to mind is the famous Love Canal which will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run a waste disposal operation. According to reports, in 1953 in the US, an industrial dump site, Love Canal, was covered with earth by the owners and then sold to the city for one dollar. A few years later, about 100 homes and a school were erected at the site. And then, on August 1, 1978, according to the New York Times, “Twenty-five years after the site ceased to be used as a dump site, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of the 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.” Also the February, 1978 edition of the EPA Journal, noted: “Even though some of these landfills have been closed down, they may stand like ticking time bombs.” Months later, Love Canal exploded.

Coming nearer home, we have the Pelewura Market at Adeniji Adele area on Lagos Island which was until 1990 a refuse dump site which conversion was carried out by the Lagos Island Local Government on the instructions of the then military administrator, Col. Raji Rasaki. The former dump site, Vanguard Features (VF) learnt, was properly sand-filled and covered with paving stones before construction started.

In a chat with VF on the dangers inherent in converting former dump sites to commercial or residential areas with the necessary amenities like bore holes and wells, Mr. Cajetan Ezeorah, an environmental toxicologist said the dangers would be drastically reduced if the site is properly remediated.

Mr. Ezeorah who is the executive director of Care of the Estranged for Social Development (COTE), a not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation based in Lagos said: “Actually, it is really harmful in the sense that a former dump site needs to be remediated. Remediation is a process of restoring an already damaged environment like a dump site also known as a brown site where refuse has been dumped overtime and thereafter, the government sold off the place (like it happened in the case of Love Canal in the US) for commercial and residential use and people go there, build houses and live. Over time, there would be incidences of epidemics and diseases, including cancer. People would begin to wonder what is going on and eventually,it is traced back and the whole message is so glaring because this place was a former dump site which was converted for residential use so it is really very harmful for us Nigerians to toe that path of development. You cannot just remove the waste and use the site for construction. There is a process involved.

Explaining further he said: “ Before you do that, make sure you remediate. It is a process that involves all aspects of physical sciences, engineering and biological sciences. The biological scientists would check the environment on biodiversity, on environmental impact assessment, to measure the impact whatever process you are going to use would have on the immediate inhabitants, the biodiversity of that particular place and also the future, so it is a kind of sustainable development that you do. And when it is done, you then take into cognizance the future, you look at the future and make sure that you are safeguarding the health and lives of the people that would reside in that place. So it is not ideal to just evacuate the waste and start erecting buildings.

“Not just the dump site alone. The surrounding environment too. What happens in dump sites is this: There is what we call leachates. If you continue dumping waste at the site, it gives rise to some liquid form of waste called leachate which is known to penetrate the ground and join with the ground water and they bear all sorts of contaminants and possible toxins like mercury, arsenic, etc. So these metals actually penetrate the ground water and water in the surrounding environment, even those not too far from the dump site may have been contaminated over the years by the presence of the dump site and nobody checked on these things. Now they evacuated the waste and built a market and probably they have a well or bore hole very close to the place to make things move smoothly. So these things need to be checked, everyone of them should be properly tested to make sure it is free from contamination before people use them.”

Also speaking to VF, a research scientist with one of the research institutes in Nigeria who pleaded anonymity noted that different problems may arise. “Engineering-wise, there must be proper excavation and compacting to avoid collapse because a lot of degradable materials can cause sinking.

Biologically, the most probable problem is water pollution. For instance, the water sources could get contaminated from degradable materials which are oxidised into dangerous materials.

As for micro organisms, they may not be too readily available to cause diseases because of extreme temperatures underground except in the case of thermophilic organisms i.e. microorganisms that love heat and thrive in high temperatures. Also toxic materials if not converted to toxoids, can leach into water.

Corroborating this assertion, Mr. Ako Amadi, a marine ecologist and director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation said: “A dump site in residential confines invites disease vectors ranging from bacteria to helminth worms, mosquitoes and flies, to viruses and rats. Seepage of disease organisms into groundwater cannot be ruled out with time.”

Advising on the need to be cautious on the part of the authorities, Mr. Ezeorah stated: “What happens to most of these projects is that we throw a lot of caution to the wind but it is ideally important that the environment is remediated by the proper process of remediation.”

On how long the remediation process takes he said: “It depends on the funds available because it takes a lot of money and the professionals involved to really go to the site, look at the harm that has been done to it and be able to project, using all the world standards for such remediation process and making sure they are carried out to the letter.”

In conclusion, Ezeorah said: “There is also the story of the Swan Park in the US that also a few years ago, was discovered to be one of the brown sites that was buried in the US which of course houses a very big park across some residential quarters and I tell you, the effects have been devastating because there was incidence of cancer, especially lung cancer along the line and nobody ever believed that it was a brown site and when it came to the fore that Swan Park was actually a brown site, they couldn’t believe their ears because overtime, they had watched people go down with ailments and die or relocated for one reason or the other but they never believed they were actually living on a former dump site and it is important, as I said before that those dump sites should not just be converted, but that world standard of remediation should be met for that environment to be properly remediated before any project whatsoever, is carried out on it especially for residential or commercial use so as to counter future health hazards that may emanate from that.”