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The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), has Fingered Shell for environmental pollution following the uncovering of a toxic waste dump site by the organization in Kdere, Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State.
In a statement released on Tuesday by ERA/FoRN and signed by Barrister Mike Karikpo, the Programme Director of the ERA/FoEN, it stated that a team of its Environmental Field Monitors visited Lot 13 and Lot 14 on September 28, 2021, and unearthed Shell’s toxic waste dump site in Kdere community.
According to the statement, some workers of Centennial Development and Investment Limited, the contractor assigned to clean up and remediate Lot 13, phase 1 batch 1 of the HYPREP delineated cleanup sites had also complained of a powerful stench oozing from the Lot.
ERA /FoEN disclosed that its field monitors noticed coloured creamy substances in the soil within the excavated pit. ERA further stated that an environmental scientist in the team disclosed that the stench and the colour of the groundwater in the pit are telltale signs that the site could be a toxic waste dumpsite.
The statement said the excavated area has been cordoned off but despite the possible health and safety implications of working in such a hazardous environment as work was still ongoing at the different sections of the site and many of the workers did not have the benefit of protective face masks or other protective gear needed for such harmful site work.
It remains difficult to know when the toxic substance excavated by this cleanup contractor was buried there but fingers are pointing inexorably to shell as the architect of the heinous crime.
ERA/FoEN recalled that in 2018, similar substances with heavily offensive odours were discovered at oil well No. 39 in the Kdere community, and subsequent laboratory analysis confirmed that the substances were toxic wastes buried there by Shell.
According to ERA, Oil well 39 where the toxic substances were removed in 2018 by Shell was neither cleaned up and compensation paid to persons from the community who suffered any effects on their crop farming, nor their health status medically assessed.
ERA field monitors and some members of the community also recalled another incident of the massive oil spill in Lot 13 and Lot 14 that occurred in 2008, with crude oil shooting up into the sky and across the nearby tarred road. Community and individual farmlands and crops were destroyed in the spill and neither relief materials nor compensation was paid. Shell’s contractor appointed to clean up and remediated this area was headed by Dr. Marvin Dekil who would later be appointed the coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) in 2017.
Shell’s cleanup and remediation team lead at the time this contract was awarded to Dr. Marvin Dekil’s firm in 2008 was Prof. Phillip Shekwelo. Not surprisingly, Prof Philip Shekwelo is the current acting coordinator of HYPREP on secondment by
Shell.
The cleanup was supposedly undertaken by Dr Marvin Dekil’s firm and supervised by Prof. Phillip Shekwolo and his team at Shell. The cleanup was supposedly completed and certified by Shell and National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) as well as the Department of Petroleum Resources.
Lamenting the situation, Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, condemned Shell’s frequent acts of secret cocktails of toxic chemicals with repugnant smell dumped in Ogoni.
He said “this is a major source of soil contamination and water pollution with serious health hazards, and community folks die off in instalments owing to no fault of theirs but the greed and plunder of an oil company that will not play to the rules but has perfected the art of repeatedly violating the people of Ogoniland and their environment.”
Dr Ojo stated that “what is playing out in the Ogoniland clean up in the uncovering