Four governors, broken promises and court orders: Why Dandora chokes City with toxic cycle

Black fumes steadily rise from tons of waste material heaped together at the Dandora dumpsite.

Anything and everything, from toxic industrial chemicals to hospital waste, finds its way to the now-filled dump that pollutes the air in the surrounding densely populated neighbourhoods of Gorogocho, Dandora, Kariadudu, Baba Dogo, Lucky Summer and Kariobangi. 

Time and again, researchers and environmentalists have raised concerns about the adverse effects of the fumes. Locals complain the fumes are harmful, especially to pregnant mothers, who often complain of bloating from smoke that travels Kilometres away.

Different organisations, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), warned that the landfill is an environmental disaster. In fact, it indicated that it endangers school children’s future and is one of Africa’s unregulated sites.

In 2021, Justice Kossy Bor directed that burning plastics should cease immediately, and within six months, Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) and National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) ought to reclaim the site and find an alternative place with a sorting area for all types of waste and recycling.

However, her orders remain, but a dream, and Dandora remains a political eyesore, and a reminder of deep-seated manoeuvres of cash-rich city trash. Critics say that the orders ought to have been complied with a long time ago.

So far, four governors have ruled Nairobi - Evans Kidero, Mike Sonko, Ann Kananu, and Johnson Sakaja, but none of they found a lasting solution to the city’s waste menace.

“The order of the court is perpetual. It assumes that the order should be complied with regardless of who is in office. If the orders were issued to General Mbadi or Sonko, you cannot argue that you will not do it. The mandate is not to the office, it is the office,” argued lawyer Evance Ndong.

During Kidero’s tenure, he tried to come up with a solution that was never implemented. His idea was to compact the waste, to create space, then relocate it to Ruai. He then intended to initiate a Sh28 billion electricity generation plant for recycling waste.

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“So far, Sh28 billion has been set aside to be used to build a plant for electricity generation and a waste recycling plant in a bid to find an alternative for the already filled Dandora dump-site. Project documentation is currently in process,” said Kidero on January 14, 2016.

An earlier attempt saw the signing of a deal between City Hall and Germany’s Strabag Company in 2013. Strabag, however, pulled out of the deal after the county failed to produce a title deed for the land. Kidero left without ending the problem.

Then came in Sonko. He, too, in 2020, talked of a recycling plant. Sonko claimed that it had shelved the plant to relocate Dandora for lack of land and promised that the project would commence in December of the same year.

“The construction of this plant will address a lot of our waste disposal challenges. I know Nairobi can do it because countries have done it,” he said.

The plant in Sonko’s plan was to generate 40MW per hour from methane gas generated from waste. But he was impeached even before the ink dried on paper, and neither did his successor, Kananu, revive the proposal.

However, in 2022, the Environment Court ordered the Dandora dumpsite to be closed within six months due to pollution. 

Justice Kossy Bor, in her judgment, has also ordered that NMS immediately stop litter burning at the dumpsite.

City Hall and NMS were required to, within 30 days, identify harmful materials and processes at the 30-acre dumpsite, and were ordered to put up a new dumpsite which will have facilities to separate degradable and biodegradable trash for recycling.

In a case filed by two Nairobi residents, Isaiah Odando and Wilson Yata, the judge directed that NMS decommission and rehabilitate the site within the same period.

The dumpsite receives about 3500 tons, and is a source of livelihood to at least 200,000 people.

Fast forward to last month, Justice Anne Omollo directed the county government to pay at least 1000 waste pickers Sh25 million for exposing them to a hazardous environment.

ALSO READ: Court gives NMS six months to close down Dandora dumpsite

Although the county had claimed that they were not its employees, the Judge observed that it could not run away from the fact that the same ought to have been decommissioned five years ago.

“Taken together, this body of evidence establishes that the working and living conditions at the dumpsite are hazardous and that the Plaintiffs are routinely exposed to substances and processes capable of causing serious harm to human health,” she said.

In court, the county’s deputy director of environment, Walter Omwenga, claimed that although there were plans to recycle waste, the plan had faltered owing to the reliance of the national government to provide finances.

He also claimed that the Nairobi City County Solid Waste Management Act, 2015, which was the county’s first devolution law on solid waste management, and that its framework contemplates gradual improvement over time.