TIRUPPUR: The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has sought a report regarding the demand that Mudalipalayam and Nallur stone quarries and related areas should be declared contaminated areas. It has issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) in this regard in response to a petition by an environmental outfit citing groundwater contamination and health risks.
The public, including farmers, claim that the groundwater and environment in the Mudalipalayam and Nallur areas have been affected by the municipal waste already dumped in the stone quarries by the Tiruppur City Municipal Corporation.
They also demanded that the stone quarries and nearby affected areas be declared as contaminated zones.
P Velusamy, Coordinator of Mudalipalayam Environmental Protection Committee, recently, sent a letter urging the CPCB) to intervene in the matter. "The TNPCB is unwilling to declare the site as contaminated. It continues to treat the matter only as a Solid Waste Management issue despite overwhelming evidence of groundwater contamination. Tiruppur Corporation is proposing further waste facilities inside the same contaminated quarry. This defeats the purpose of the contaminated sites rules and exposes thousands of residents to long-term public health risk," he stated.
In the petition he urged the CPCB to directly constitute or depute a CPCB expert team for on-site assessment in the affected areas.
The CPCB should initiate formal contaminated site identification using existing TNPCB laboratory data as baseline and Declare Mudalipalayam-Nallur quarry system as a 'Contaminated Site'. Otherwise this contaminated site will permanently escape remediation due to local administrative reluctance, he added.
Following this, the CPCB has instructed the TNPCB to submit a report in this regard.
The CPCB, in a letter to the Member Secretary of TNPCB, said, "It is requested to kindly investigate the aforesaid abandoned quarry and provide its current status within a week. If any violation of the said EPMCS Rules, 2025 is identified, may also include an Action Taken Report (ATR) along with the said current status."
A senior official of TNPCB (Tiruppur) said, "We cannot decide that it is a contaminated area. But we have written to our board regarding this demand. The board will decide that."
The Madras High Court had earlier banned the dumping of garbage in stone quarries.