: It is seven years since the Corporation has begun selling the dream of the region around the Brahamapuram solid waste plant getting a ‘green belt’.
Talks veered from the Corporation planting saplings all over the area to the forest department growing trees there. In reality, precious little has happened on ground, except that a small portion of land had been brought under paddy and tapioca cultivation done by the corporation.
Last month, the urban affairs department asked the civic body to either go the whole hog bringing vast tracts of land, 110 acres to be precise, owned by it under cultivation or to allow the Clean Kerala Company, which will now be operating the septage plant set up there, to do it.
But just when the Clean Kerala Company, a government enterprise, has started to firm up plans to launch vegetable and fruit cultivation on a massive scale, the corporation is throwing the spanner in the scheme of things by insisting that it has proposed to grow grass for livestock feed in the area.
Jolly Thomas, project manager of Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP), the technical agency that steered the septage plant project, says processed water — about 90,000 litres daily — released from the plant “will be of extremely good quality, fit to be drained out into the nearby Kadambrayar River. However, since this is likely to trigger fears of pollution among people in the neighbourhood, the recommendation is to use this water for vegetable cultivation in the area.”
But the corporation authorities say veggie cultivation in the area is unsustainable; the alternative is to grow grass that can be sold as cattle feed. “It will rake in the moolah. The area will be green and there will be zero complaints of pollution,” maintains corporation secretary V.R. Raju. “But the proposal will now have to be vetted by the council [post-elections for constructive action in this regard,” he says.
Corporation authorities say veggie cultivation in the area is unsustainable; the alternative is to grow grass that can be sold as cattle feed.
