By MyEngineers
A former chairman of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, NSE Enugu Branch, Chigbo Obealor, has warned that the widespread habit of covering residential compounds with concrete and interlocking stones is driving both flooding and a steady loss of groundwater in many communities.
He raised this concern in Enugu while being honoured by women of the Nibo Community for his years of service to community development and the engineering profession.
According to him, paving entire compounds stops rainwater from soaking into the ground, forcing it to run off the surface instead, and this is a major reason floods have become more common.
“Many people may not know this, but landscaping of residential areas has caused a lot of damage to groundwater. Imagine if about 60 per cent of Enugu is covered with concrete. There will be no percolation, and all the rainwater will flow straight into rivers and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean,” he said.
He explained that rainwater is meant to sink into the soil and stay there, feeding the underground reserves that boreholes later draw from, but this natural cycle has been broken.
“The water is supposed to be absorbed into the soil and retained for future use through boreholes and other sources. Today, the aquifer level in Enugu is dropping at a very alarming rate because that natural process has been disrupted,” he said.
He added that the problem is not peculiar to Enugu, noting that many other Nigerian cities have adopted the same habit of over paving compounds without weighing the long term cost to the environment.
Comparing the situation with what obtains in other countries, he said homeowners abroad are far more deliberate about leaving room for rainwater to reach the soil.
“If you build a house abroad, you don’t cement the entire compound. You leave green areas. That has been part of the environmental discipline that we have neglected here,” he said.
He called on town planning authorities to enforce rules requiring homeowners to set aside green spaces on their properties, and looked back at how residential layouts used to be designed decades ago.
“Go to the old GRA layouts of the 1960s and you will hardly see compounds completely covered with concrete. They were mostly green. Today, even on a 1,000-square-metre plot, everything is either interlocked or cemented. Any rainfall immediately becomes runoff because there is no retention,” he said.
He also pointed to the falling water table as proof of what he was describing, saying boreholes that used to strike water easily now need to go much deeper.
He described uncontrolled concrete landscaping as one of the least talked about causes of flooding and groundwater loss, and urged engineers, environmental experts and planners to do more to educate the public on the issue.
“I stand ready to defend this position anywhere. It is an issue that professionals need to explain more to the public because not many people understand its impact,” he added.