MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently directed the Kanniyakumari district administration and local body to come up with a mechanism to prevent discharge of sewage water into Krishnankoil canal in the district, within a year.
A bench of justices GR Swaminathan and B Pugalendhi gave the direction while disposing of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition filed by one M Stephen, in 2016, against the discharge of sewage into the aforesaid canal.
In a status report, commissioner of the Nagercoil municipality had stated that the works to set up an underground drainage system and sewage treatment plant are under way in the corporation limits. As of now, sewage water from the septic tanks are collected by lorries and subjected to deep row entrenchment process at Thengamputhoor, the commissioner added.
The judges, however, were not satisfied with the said stand of the authorities. They took judicial notice of the fact that septic tank lorries discharge the effluents during nighttime in fields and waterbodies, and that it goes unnoticed by the officials. This is a regular occurrence across districts, they added. They directed the local body and the district administration to evolve an appropriate mechanism within a year, to ensure that residents do not discharge untreated sewage into Krishnankoil canal.