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COMMENTARY

By Martin Masai, 

EDITOR/PUBLISHER

A decade-long cry for justice by the people of Thange in Kibwezi East, Makueni County, has finally been answered.

Not from the Government of Kenya, the Polluter-in- Chief Kenya Pipeline Company, nor  the National Environment Management Authority.

It came from a judicial action after years of a scathing fight by a peasant community abandoned by the state.

In a landmark judgment delivered yesterday at the Makueni Law Courts, a three-judge bench awarded Kes. 3.8 billion to the residents of Thange for the catastrophic environmental damage caused by the 2015 petroleum spill from a burst pipeline operated by Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC).

The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) was also held liable for its failure to act.

The ruling, delivered by Lady Justices Christine Ochieng, Theresa Murigi, and Annette Nyukuri, brings to an end years of litigation and anguish for residents whose lives, land, livestock, and livelihoods were destroyed by toxic hydrocarbons that leaked into River Thange.

It is a unique form of abuse of human rights of a community that resides in one of Kenya arid enclaves.

“The evidence presented by the petitioners was compelling. It showed not only pollution, but state and corporate negligence at a monumental scale,” the judges noted in their 200-page judgment.

The Anchor has extensively covered the Thange disaster over the years. In our April 2016 investigative piece, “A River Poisoned: The Thange Tragedy and the Cost of Silence,” we exposed the trail of suffering left by the oil leak—from farmers forced to abandon their crops, to families whose children developed unexplained illnesses, and hundreds who watched their livestock perish after drinking contaminated water.

We reported on the government’s slow and disjointed response, the lack of medical screening, the delayed compensation promises, and attempts by agencies to downplay the scale of pollution.

Yesterday’s judgment vindicates what residents, activists, and independent environmental experts have long claimed: that the spill was not just an accident, but a monumental failure of corporate responsibility and regulatory oversight that now needs to be viewed through a criminal lens.

The court apportioned 80 percent liability to Kenya Pipeline as the principal polluter and 20 percent to NEMA for dereliction of duty. Kenya Pipeline has further been ordered to pay Kes. 900 million for environmental restoration, including the cleanup of polluted soils, riparian land, and water bodies- a task no one is likely to trust NEMA to do.

The rest of the award includes:

• Kes. 28 million for loss of domestic water
• Kes. 553.5 million for violation of constitutional rights
• Kes. 23.5 million for loss of land use income
• Kes. 225 million for livestock losses
• Kes. 198.15 million for future medical treatment
• Kes. 815.15 million for pain and loss of amenities
• Kes. 250 million for loss of life (15 victims)
• Kes. 5 million for the cost of a borehole
• Kes. 6.9 million for special damages and lab tests
• Kes. 11.2 million for livestock assessment
• Kes. 250 million in punitive damages. It is likely that by the time KPC pays – if at all – many more residents will be dead while new ones will be writhing in pain on hospital beds.

All parties were directed to bear their own legal costs- including the Thange community!

Certainly, this is a watershed moment for environmental justice in Kenya.

The ruling is being hailed as one of the largest environmental compensation awards in Kenya’s history.

For Makueni Governor Mutula Kilonzo Jr., who served as Senator during the heat of the Thange crisis, the decision is a bittersweet milestone. “We stood with the people of Thange when no one else would. This judgment proves that environmental crimes must be met with real accountability,” he said.

Both Kenya Pipeline and NEMA had earlier denied liability, insisting that the affected population was minimal and that cleanup efforts had been conducted in good faith.

Indeed, KPC – an organization whose operations are purely science based-at one time approved a proposal to support the execution of a traditional ritual to cleanse the Thange ecosystem in a bid to hoodwink residents that they had been bewitched.

As of press time, neither KPC nor NEMA had issued a statement on the ruling.

Legal experts anticipate that KPC may appeal the judgment, but environmental activists have urged the company to comply and begin the process of reparations.

While the ruling brings legal closure for now, the scars left by the 2015 spill will linger for generations and may never be healed.

Residents continue to rely on boreholes and trucked-in water. The surrounding farms, once fertile, have yet to fully recover. The people here do not know what exactly hit them. No civic education is going on. No counselling.  Nothing. No one knows when KPC and NEMA will pay the fine. Citizens are on their own.

And as The Anchor editorialized in 2019, “A community can not heal when the truth is buried beneath toxic sludge.” The words are as true today as they were true then.

Today, that truth has finally come to light—backed by a court of law, etched into legal precedent, and carried on the voices of the people of Thange who refused to be silenced.

There is no more time to wait. KPC,NEMA, pay up now.

Stay Anchored.

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