Ogoni Clean-UP: HYPREP To Provide Water In Eleme Community …As Five Firms Commence Work, Soon

The Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), has stated its readiness to commence the provision of water to a community in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State which is highly polluted by oil spill.
The Federal Government is also expected to grant the agency some waivers to enable it undertake the provision of water to the community as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has granted the remaining five companies and contractors handling the Ogoni clean-up the go ahead to mobilise to site.
HYPREP’s Project Coordinator, Dr. Marvin Dekil, who dropped the hint while interacting with journalists in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, said modalities have been put in place to commence the provision of water to the Eleme community, in particular.
He said the Minister of Environment, Surveyor Suleiman Zarma on Tuesday in Abuja held a pre-commencement meeting with the five additional contractors to enable them move to site soon.
It would be recalled that 21 lots have so far been approved for the Ogoni clean-up project and 16 contractors are already working on impacted sites in the area. The five additional lots were recently approved by the Federal Executive Council.
Dekil clarified that HYPREP is not a parallel government to provide social amenities to all communities in the entire Ogoniland but merely an agency saddled with the responsibility of taking care of the needs of impacted sites and communities in the area.
The project coordinator, who did not mention the name of the community for the water project, said waivers are expected to be provided by the Federal Government going by the urgency of the matter, adding that the agency had already gone into collaboration with the Rivers State Ministry of Water Resources to set up new water facilities in other communities in Ogoniland.
He explained that contrary to the recommendation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as contained in its Report, the agency, because of time factor, was carrying out the clean-up project and the provision of emergency measures like water and livelihoods concurrently, bearing in mind that it took eight years after the submission of the UNEP Report for the implementation of its recommendations to commence
Dekil further disclosed that UNEP recently organised a study tour for members of HYPREP’s Governing Council, who visited six different remediation sites in the United Kingdom, where massive remediation work has been carried out or is still going on.
He said though no particular remediation method is absolute, HYPREP has adopted the biological options in the clean-up of Ogoniland, as 99 percent of the contaminants in the impacted sites in the area are hydrocarbons.
According to him, the biological method the agency has adopted is the most cost effective.

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