The Syokimau Railway Station was officially opened on 13th November 2012 by H.E. the President Mwai Kibaki.
This is the first station to be completed under the Nairobi Commuter Railway(NCR) project and comes more than 80 years after the last railway station was opened in Butere. Athi River has a railway station built in 1920 along the Uganda Railway, from Mombasa to Kisumu. There is also a new railway station on the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway called the Athi River train station. The distance between the two stations is approximately 19KM. Although the actual land area affected by the SGR covers only a small proportion between these two stations, a significant proportion of the area was affected.
The construction of a major railway between these two stations have led to long-term environmental impacts which need to be addressed accordingly. The SGR project was given the go-ahead following the completion of two Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, but scientists question how effectively recommendations were implemented in the development, given the evidence of widespread environmental degradation that can be seen in the area.
The construction and operation of railways implies changes in the surrounded landscape. Looking from engineering perspective, landscape modification by the SGR construction has resulted in increased soil erosion, disturbances to bore holes, water piping and storage systems, surface run-off, land degradation, flooding, sedimentation of water bodies, habitat destruction, oil spillage and many other related engineering problems.
The people of these two towns syokimau and Athi river, have being severely affected by this engineered environmental problems hence something was needed to be done.
Therefore, I thought an environmental audit was necessary between these two stations.
The purpose of this study therefore is to assess the magnitude of the above mentioned environmental engineering impacts which have been caused by the SGR project between these two stations and hence model engineering aided solutions to the problems.
