With complaints of leachate from the Brahmapuram solid waste treatment plant draining into Kadambrayar gathering momentum, the Kochi Corporation is planning to go in for a new leachate treatment plant.
Senior government officials who visited the plant site last week had reportedly highlighted the issue of leachate polluting the river water. The officials are also understood to have raised apprehensions about the level of pollution increasing during the monsoon.
The corporation is in the process of completing the paper works for floating tenders for the leachate treatment plant, a senior official of the civic body has said.
The new plant will have the capacity to treat the waste water flowing out of the garbage heaps and also from the sanitary land fill sites. Once the plant became operational, the issue of leachate would be resolved permanently, said a civic official.
Besides the leachate flowing out from the garbage heaps piled up at the plant site, the water seeping in through the cracked floor of the plant where garbage is tipped is also contributing to the pollution. While the leachate from the waste could be controlled to some extent, the civic authorities are finding it difficult to plug the cracks in the floor and check the water seepage. The local bodies of the region had earlier protested against the pollution caused by the overflowing of leachate to the water body.
The civic officials maintained that they had undertaken steps for reducing pollution from the plant site. Work on development of a green belt around the plant site has begun. Plantains and vegetables were also being cultivated extensively at the plant site to reduce the impact of pollution, the official said.
T.K. Ashraf, chairman of the health standing committee of the corporation, said the civic body had initiated repair and maintenance works including the repair of roads at the plant site. The government officials who visited the plant recently had highlighted the need for improving the infrastructure facilities there. The delay in getting statutory clearances for various components of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission was a cause of concern for the civic body, he said.
As the Brahmapuram project was supported by the JNNURM, the subsequent projects to be implemented there had to be cleared by an empowered committee formed for the project. A proposal for procuring tricycles for the collection of garbage has been pending with the authorities for nearly one-and-a-half years, he said.
