COIMBATORE: Mettupalayam Municipal chairman D Sathish Kumar recently submitted a petition to Union Minister of State for Environment Prakash Javadekar demanding a sewage treatment plant there to prevent pollution of the Bhavani river, from which the town draws drinking water.
Though it is the government’s duty to supply pure water to the public, the municipality’s financial status is not good enough for it.
The Centre should therefore allot funds under National River Conservation Plan and set up a sewage treatment plant so that the river water remains unpolluted, he said in the petition.
The municipality draws 10-11 mld of water from the Bhavani and distributes it among the town’s residents numbering nearly 75,000. However, about 8 mld of sewage is let out into the river at 25 places, he said in the petition.
The perennial river is a source of water for drinking and irrigation for Coimbatore, Tirupur and Erode districts.
However, a check dam of the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation at Oomapalayam, built one and a half years ago, has affected places drawing water from below it.
Sewage content in the drinking water taken from the river for villages like Chikkadasampalayam, Jadayampalayam and for nine other combined drinking water schemes is now high.
The Samanna headwater pumping station of the Mettupalayam Municipality has also been affected due to this, Sathish Kumar said in the petition.
