KOCHI: The amicus curiae appointed by the High Court in the Marine Drive beautification case has told the court that sewage disposal continues to be a menace to the city.In his report, advocate Liju V Stephen, who was asked by the court to inspect the release of sewage from buildings near Marine Drive into the Kochi backwaters, proper draining of sewage had proved ineffective due to shortage of land. He also suggested setting up a centralised sewage treatment plant in the city.
As per the report, the corporation and Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) officials informed the amicus curiae that the sewage treatment plant (STP) maintained by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) at Elamkulam served a meagre six per cent of Kochi’s population, owing to the non-functioning of the central sewage pipeline to the STP.
The report said KWA possessed a large tract of land at Elamkulam on which a modern STP could be built for addressing a majority of sewage disposal issues. The report called for proper sanitation measures and said the government and local body authorities should provide sufficient infrastructure to address the issues.
The report also said that discharging treated effluents into the backwaters required a licence issued by the KSPCB. However, the board officials said no such licence or consent to operate had been issued to an apartment building near Marine Drive that operated an STP, said the report. It said KSPCB had collected water samples from the apartment’s STP and sent them to a lab for scientific examination.
The report said effluent waste from apartments are normally collected in a tank, screened for solid wastes and flowed into an aeration tank with a Moving Bed Bio Reactor (MBBR).“However, the inspection of the STP of an apartment building revealed that the tank with the MBBR was non-functional,” the amicus curiae said in the report.