Direct treatment of Pampa water to resume

Published on January 25, 2013 09:27 by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Government

After a three-year gap, fears about direct treatment of water in the Njunangar stream and the Pampa river with contaminated chemicals have come back to haunt people in Pathanamthitta district.

Some political functionaries and high-level officials of the Kerala State Pollution Control Board, the Travancore Devaswom Board and the State government are making yet another attempt to treat the water using a ferrous chloride-titania mixture, which is a contaminated by-product of a private company in Ernakulam district, V.N. Gopinatha Pillai, vice-president of the Kerala River Protection Council, says.

The Devaswom Board had made a similar attempt on the directions of the Pollution Control Board during the Makaravilakku festival in 2009 and 2010.

The attempt had invited strong protests from experts and environmental groups, and the government intervened to stop it in January 2010. Mr. Pillai toldThe Hinduhere on Thursday that the visit of a 30-member team, led by a Pollution Control Board member, to the polluted Njunangar stream on Tuesday was part of a move by certain business lobbies to revive the treatment.

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