Five agencies bid for Ashtamudi Lake

KOLLAM: Taking a step closer to the much awaited sewage treatment plant to save the polluted Ashtamudi Lake, five pre-qualified agencies have submitted financial bids along with detailed reports for the project. The treatment plant to be set up near the district hospital in Kollam will have both a solid and liquid effluent treatment facility and will be installed, operated, and maintained by the lowest bidder for ten years. The district panchayat has allotted Rs. 1.5 cr, the pollution control board Rs. 49 lakhs, and the Suchitwa Mission, Rs. 1 cr for the project. The tenders received from the bidders will be opened on December 7 and will be finalised before the State Suchitwa Mission. The proposed site for the treatment plant in the compound of the old RMO quarters near the district hospital will be visited by a technical committee before finalising the proposal. 

"The technical committee will include representatives from Suchitwa mission, Kudumbasree, district panchayat, an expert from the TKM college of engineering, and the superintendents of the District and Victoria hospitals here. The demolishing of RMO quarters in the proposed site has already begun to facilitate faster implementation of the project," district panchayat secretary K. Prasad told DC. The expression of interests from seven agencies for setting up the treatment plant were submitted before the director of Suchitwa Mission and the five pre-qualified agencies among them were given a pollution control board approved site plan.

The initiative by the Kollam district panchayat is to revive the dying Ashtamudi Lake and make it pollution-free by preventing untreated urban runoffs from hospitals and other establishments from entering the lake and by promoting afforestation with mangroves along its banks. The plant will serve the Victoria hospital and the district hospital by treating solid and liquid waste.

The State Government has already sanctioned Rs. 35 cr for various tourism projects in the district, which will also support the cause of reviving the Ashtamudi Lake. The lake that had a glorious past has now turned into a dumpyard of urban runoffs including untreated medical waste from hospitals, oil from workshops, and plastic wastes. The size of the lake has halved in the last 50 years, and the process is continuing.  A declared Ramsar site with extremely fragile ecological balance has also witnessed gross violations of Coastal Regulatory Zone norms.