Lagos woos residents to public water supply, warns against unsafe water

The Lagos Water Corporation (LWC) has warned residents to desist from drinking contaminated groundwater or patronising the informal sector that were not safe.

LWC Group Managing Director, Mr Muminu Badmus, in a statement, urged residents to connect to potable water supply from the Corporation. He noted that drinking polluted groundwater or contaminated water could cause many types of diseases, which include Cholera, diarrhoea and other serious water borne diseases.

“The public water supply is fit for human consumption, it is safe, as it conforms to World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Standard, while groundwater and other informal sector are unsafe and not fit for consumption.

“The Water Quality Monitoring team of the Lagos water corporation is presently conducting a regular water quality routine check (Sampling & in-situ Analysis) on water delivered to their customers.

“The ongoing exercise is to ascertain the quality of water supplied to their homes to ensure consumption of potable water always,” Badmus said.

He, however, cautioned Lagosians on the proliferation of borehole in the state which, he said, constituted serious health and environmental hazard to the residents of the state.

Badmus appealed to Lagosians to migrate back to the public water supply for guaranteed and safe service delivery.

According to him, the persistent rainfall which goes into the sewage, finds its way to the groundwater and thereby contaminating the groundwater.

Badmus also stated that groundwater pollution was where the pit latrine in the background was polluting the shallow well in the foreground with pathogens and nitrate.

He said that shallow pollution was also caused by on-site sanitation systems, landfills, effluent from waste water treatment plants, leaking sewers, petrol filling, amongst others.

Badmus said the effluent which were released to the ground making their way down into groundwater resources and rendering it unsafe for human consumption.