Tamil Nadu government forms five committees to monitor pollution of Cauvery river

The Tamil Nadu government announced on Saturday that the state government has formulated five committees to closely monitor the issue of letting out noxious waste into the Cauvery river and its tributaries. The state government has said that strict and sustained efforts will be made to protect the water resources in Tamil Nadu. The State Environment and Climate Change Minister Siva V Meyyanathan also said that the water samples have been collected to determine the level of contamination and take proper action.

Over the past few months, the state government has initiated several programmes to reduce the level of pollution and contamination of several rivers across the state, including Cauvery. Before the elections, Chief Minister MK Stalin promised to take steps to ensure that the water in the rivers is clean. Stalin recently said, “The latest initiative is to constitute five panels comprising the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) on October 6 to monitor if untreated effluents from the dyeing units in Erode, Kumarapalayam, Pallipalayam, Karur and Tirupur were discharged into the Cauvery and its tributaries.” He also said that the committees have already begun the inspection and soon will come up with an action plan.

IIT and TNPCB working to study the contamination level of rivers

Not just the officials from the special committees, engineers from the TNPCB and IIT-Madras have collected samples at various places from Mettur to Mayiladuthurai on October 9. The samples have been further sent for analysis as IIT-Madras suspects that the Cauvery river could be heavily polluted by pharmaceutically-active compounds, plastics, heavy metals and pesticides. The study performed by the TNPCB and IIT-M is a jointly funded programme by the Water Technology Initiatives of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the UK Natural Environment Research Council. A previous study found out that the water contains contaminants, including personal care products, flame retardants, etc. “Efforts are on to obtain the advice of experts including those from IIT (M) to prevent the pollution of Cauvery river,” Meyyanathan said and added that based on their reports and guidance of the Chief Minister, steps will be taken to protect the water sources in the state.

(with PTI inputs)

Image: PTI