For Sanjay,Shaju and Abdul, their early morning dip in the sea after attending nature’scall was cut short, when their elders advised them not to do so. “We saw thedirty, gutter water from the Sewage Plant mix with the stream that flows intothe sea” says 11 year old Sanjay. 10 year old Abdul wonders “Don’t you see thatblack stream disappearing into the sea?”. That innocent statement lifts the lidoff Vasco’s most sinister secret. The qualityof ‘treated’ water being pumped out of Vasco’s Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) maybe suspect and the PWD (Sewage) Vasco is polluting the sea.
Recent mediareports of MPT’s Reply to Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) hadalleged that PWD’s ‘poor manner of operating’ the Baina based STP was responsiblefor ‘virtually inadequately treated sewage and effluents’ being discharged intothe sea causing ‘huge environmental damages to the coastal water of the BainaBay area’. A fact visible to the naked eye, and does not need to be proved by thestate government pollution monitoring mechanism.
LevinsonMartins, member secretary of the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) said,“The responsibility of monitoring the sewage problem has to be handled by thesewage department itself. It is their issue and needs to be sorted there.”
Section 25and 26 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 amended in1988 is very clear on the required levels of water quality. The STP built in1985 came before the CRZ Act passed in 1991. The fact however is that its substandardinfrastructure and outdated equipment just provides lip-service to the cause oftreating sewage water. The pumping of sewage into the sea cannot be negated. Anotherengineer at the PWD sewage department states “There is a new plant in thepipeline that will soon be tendered. The technology the plant proposes toincorporate will allow us to use the treated water for companies that operatehuge machinery. We need to save water, as it is a precious resource, and thequality that this plant promises to deliver will kill two birds with one stone.It will stop the pollution and use treated water. The chief minister has takena look at our plant and has proposed this. Let’s see what happens”. Until then,Sanjay, Shaju and Abdul will continue to keep off Baina Bay.
(Inputs fromAjay Thakur)
