The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked the authorities to come up with a revised Detailed Project Report (DPR) in three months to end the discharge of industrial sludge into the Periyar river.
The Principal Bench of the Tribunal, which had judicial members S.P. Wangdi and K. Ramakrishnan and expert member Nagan Nanda, issued the order last week on petitions filed by Shibu Manuel, secretary, Green Action Force, Kochi, and K. Muhammed Iqbal.
The Tribunal fixed the revised deadline after noting that the case had been lingering since 2013 and some remediation measures were initiated in January this year. The petitioners had also sought directions to clean Kuzhikandam Thodu, Panachithodu, Pallipuramchal and Unthithodu, the streams that flow into the Periyar.
Tender documents
The Tribunal also stated that all tender documents had to be “completed without fail within three months including award of the work to the successful bidder”.
The Tribunal had earlier constituted a committee, which was to be supervised by the Central Pollution Control Board, for the remediation of the polluted river stretches.
The committee, which had representatives of the Central and State Pollution Control Boards, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, and the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, and the District Magistrate as its members, was also directed to prepare an action plan for remediation in a time-bound manner by using the available funds. It was also directed that the State and the Central Pollution Control Boards shall exercise their statutory powers to recover compensation for the damage to the environment by applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
When the case came up for consideration, the Central Pollution Control Board submitted that the concentration of contamination in the area would have to be re-verified as the heavy flood that occurred last year might have flushed away contaminants from the sites into the river or sea mouth. It was also suggested that limited sampling might have to be carried out at Kuzhikandom Thodu and its downstream areas for confirming the presence of contaminants.
The Central Board also submitted that while changes in concentration of contaminants were expected due to heavy floods, it was not expected to go lower than remediation targets levels.
The reassessment of the site and revision of DPR, it submitted, might take substantial time and financial resources. There could be delay in the remediation of the site, which had already been delayed for more than a decade, it submitted.
On its part, the State Pollution Control Board informed the Tribunal that it had completed the sampling and analysis from the Periyar. The Tribunal will consider the case on October 9.
