Taloja plant blamed for Kasadi pollution

With pollution in the Kasadi River having allegedly reached hazardous levels due to discharge of industrial effluents from Taloja’s MIDC industrial complex, the fishing community and activists are blaming the CETP plant for this situation. Moreover, it has been more than a month since a showcause notice was issue and action is yet to be taken against the CETP plant.

Activists on Wednesday wrote to the MPCB secretary, pointing out delay on the part of concerned officials in taking action against the CETP plant. On June 17, the Navi Mumbai regional office of MPCB had written to Taloja CETP Cooperative Society Ltd about failure of the plant to ensure that the discharge quality matched parameters set by the state pollution control body.

MPCB officials confirmed that directions had been issued from time to time to improve CETP’s performance in terms of achieving consented standards, installing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and installing online monitoring systems. “Whereas it was directed to monitor the defaulting industries for MPCB to take action, after collecting samples for one year, it is observed that parameters are not achieved as consented in the samples,” said the letter.

Apparently, samples collected by MPCB from outlet centres of the plant showed the presence of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), suspended solids, sulphide and mercury in excess of consented standards. “Despite repeated directions, instructions and visits, the plant failed to instruct member industries to operate and maintain the respective ETPs for discharging consented inlet parameters,” confirmed officials.

Godfrey Pimenta from Watchdog Foundation, who wrote a letter to MPCB officials, requesting speedy action in the matter, said that for many days, MPCB officials at the local level had failed to take any action against the board of directors of the company running Taloja CETP. “Even after serving a show cause notice to the plant, the situation is the same and Taloja CETP has not deterred the polluters. Why should the environment suffer due to their lethargy ” questioned Mr Pimenta.