The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Plastic waste in sewers causes discomfort

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 13, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Plastic waste in sewers causes discomfort

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, SEPT.12. If the Coimbatore Corporation's efforts to re-lay the much abused underground sewer line on Arts College Road offers comfort to the people using this stretch, the rest of the areas in the city have a major reason to feel unhappy over the abuse of sewers: plastic waste.

On Saturday, conservancy workers clearing a block in an open drainage canal near a mill along Mettupalayam Road came up with a massive haul of plastic bottles. This pointed to the continuance of the deplorable practice of dumping all kinds of disposable plastic items into sewers, to avoid storing and handing them over to conservancy workers.

The workers, as well as civic officials, lament that people do not realise that disposing of plastic waste in such a fashion does little to eliminate the menace. In fact, such abuse of drainage canals only leads to more health hazards such as frequent sewerage bursts causing pollutant waste water to overflow on roads or collect in pools where public congregate or live in large numbers.

Efforts to remove blocks in most sewer lines in the city lead invariably to unearthing of several plastic items that arrest smooth flow of waste water, cause line bursts and turn roads into a shambles.

Regarding the problem on Arts College Road, the Corporation has involved commercial establishments in funding replacement of worn out lines. For long, the civic body had held them guilty of abusing the lines by dumping a medley of waste materials including plastic, food and bio-medical waste.

When it comes to underground drainage, the civic body is armed with the possibility of pointing fingers at suspected culprits going by the establishments' proximity to inlets to the drains and also the type of waste found.

Slabs missing

But civic officials feel harangued by the volume and types of waste dumped into open drainage canals. Their agony is heightened by the inability to fix the culprits. Slabs on most of the canals are missing. This provides plenty of opportunity for people to dump whatever they want and still go undetected. Empty bottles (in which packaged drinking water or soft drinks are sold) are found aplenty in both underground and open drains. Next come the disposable plastic cups, going by the experience of the workers so far.

This practice has been found to be rampant in the extended areas of the city where there are no underground sewers and also in the storm water drains in the core part of the city. Even as the Corporation continues its long drawn-out struggle to have a waste management scheme in place, the overpowering desire to litter the drains seems unstoppable. With stagnant drains the diseases spread.

Abuse of drains

As in the case of many areas along Mettupalayam Road, other areas such as Ramanathapuram have plenty of instances of abuse of drains. Kitchen waste and plastic items from households and commercial establishments find their way into the drains and not into garbage bins as they are some distance away. Adding to the agony is the dumping of building debris. For all these, the open drainage canals come in handy. Mostly, these acts are done under the cover of darkness. While the public point fingers at commercial establishments, the latter allege that residents are also to be blamed. This leaves civic officials clueless over what action they can take, especially in the absence of a stringent law to prevent littering.

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