Tonnes of plastic and biomedical waste were removed from Veerapanjan tank by a group of villagers on Wednesday.
B. Guru Chandrasekar, an environmentalist who was leading the clearing of the waste, said that syringes, urine bags and intravenous tubes were removed from the tank.
However, officials from Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, Public Works and Revenue departments and district administration, who came to the spot as the news spread, maintained that only plastic waste was found dumped at Veerapanjan tank.
The officials were also present there till night, inspecting the clearing of waste along the bund of the tank.
“The allegations that biomedical waste was dumped at the tank are false. Only tonnes of plastic waste was found at the tank. As a precautionary measure, officials of Public Works department will raise the bund to prevent such incidents in the future,” said Tahsildar (East) R. Vijayalakshmi.
Mr. Chandrasekar said that when the inlet channel of the tank was cleared a week back, no waste was found there.
“Only in the last five days, someone had dumped medical waste inside the channel,” he said.
Collector T.G. Vinay also said that only a huge amount of plastic waste was found at the site.
“It looks like someone had transported the plastic waste from a different locality and dumped it here. The officials will segregate the waste and the plastic will be shredded to lay roads,” the Collector said.
Mr. Vinay also added that the hospitals in the region would be inspected to check if they were abiding by the law in the disposal of biomedical waste.
