The district administration will write to the government seeking its concurrence to form a Periyar Pollution Monitoring Committee with representatives from the State Pollution Control Board, Irrigation Department and environmentalists from the region.
“We are going to write to the government with this recommendation and will wait, in the meantime, for test results of water samples collected from the river before shutters of the Pathalam bund were raised,” District Collector K. Mohammed Y. Safirulla said.
The formation of the committee was in principle agreed upon by the administration after environmentalists, who objected to the raising of the shutters of the regulator-cum-bridge, had demanded a permanent solution to arrest further pollution of the river.
That the river downstream of the bund turned blackish, choked with mud and filth emanating a penchant foul smell soon after the shutters were raised, was enough reason to suspect some strong pollutants entering the river system.
“The onus is on the administration to identify the source of pollution. If 15 days of closure could pollute the river so much, what could be the amount of pollutants getting dumped in it?” asked Purushan Eloor, environmentalist.
People like him, residents of the region, protested the opening of the bund, but relented after the Deputy Collector (Disaster Management) K.B. Babu heeded to their request and asked the Pollution Control Board to collect samples of the stagnant water before the shutters were raised.
“A promise was made to construct an observation pathway to monitor pollution of the river. One of the recommendations, made by the National Geophysical Research Institute that there be a mechanism to prevent discharge of effluents into the river using underwater pipelines, was flagged by us which the administration said it would consider. We are also awaiting the water sample results and hope the committee mooted by the administration would act on the outcome and implement the recommendations,” he said.
