The construction of a new septage treatment plant at Willingdon Island will begin this month.
The upcoming facility attains significance in the wake of inadequate treatment facilities in the city and various instances of unauthorised collection and dumping of waste in open areas being reported. The dumping of toilet waste in populated areas had led to law and order issues as an irate mob had set a tanker lorry on fire and attacked the vehicle crew.
The Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP), which set up the treatment plant at Brahmapuram, has taken up the task of establishing the new plant too. The proposed plant will have an installed capacity to process one lakh litres of septage a day. The development of land, where the project is to come up, has been completed. The date of inauguration of work would be finalised after a discussion with officials concerned, said R. Girija, Project Director, KSUDP.
The work on the Rs. 4.16-crore plant is expected to be completed within six months.
Once the Brahmapuram and the Willingdon plants become operational, the perennial issue of dumping toilet waste into city drains and water bodies is likely to be tackled. At the Brahmapuram plant, Ms. Girija said the development of sludge, for bacteria to thrive for treating waste, was progressing. Each day, the load of septage that is drained into the treatment plant is increased. In two days, the load would be increased to 11 loads a day. This would be gradually increased to reach the installed capacity of 20 tanker lorries a day at the plant, she said.
Going by the initial rounds of discussion, a processing fee of around Rs. 2,500 would be charged per tanker lorry. User fee would have to be collected as the plant has to earn revenue for its operation. Once the list of tanker lorries permitted to collect the waste was finalised, the contact numbers would be published and the residents could contact the agencies for collecting the waste from their residences and apartment complexes, she said.
Meanwhile, a group of eight councillors of the Kochi Corporation from the west Kochi area, where a sewerage treatment facility is coming up, visited the septage treatment facility set up by the Kerala Water Authority in Thiruvananthapuram. The delegation was taken to the State capital to get an idea of the functioning of the facility there. The KSUDP is in the process of setting up a network of sewerage treatment at Mundamveli.
K.J. Sohan, chairman of the Town Planning Standing Committee of the Kochi Corporation, who was in the delegation, said the councillors appreciated the work at Thiruvananthapuram site and would support the upcoming facility at Mundamveli.
The plant will have an installed capacity to process one lakh litres of septage a day.
