The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : Periyar discolouration still a mystery

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 12, 2007
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Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

Periyar discolouration still a mystery

Staff Reporter

Phenomenon spotted on Monday

KOCHI: The discolouration of the Periyar waters continues to remain a mystery with the monitoring agencies unable to trace the sources behind the phenomenon.

The discolouration spotted at Paathaalam and Varapuzha on Monday was the latest in a series of similar incidents over the past one year.

On September 6 last year, the discoloured waters of the Periyar flowed upstream from the Pathaalam Bund at Eloor.

Local residents had then alleged that the clandestine dumping of industrial effluents into the river by some factories in the area had caused the discolouration.

They had also said that the factories in the Eloor-Edayar area in the past used to dump effluents into the river during long holidays, such as Onam and Christmas.

Rejecting rumours of factories dumping effluents, the State Pollution Control Board (PCB) had concluded that there was a “distinct possibility of discolouring matter being added to the river by miscreants on September 6.”

In its report submitted to the Ernakulam District Collector, the PCB had said that the discolouration that day was a temporary phenomenon and that it had disappeared the next day. Referring to such incidents in the past, the report said the entire issue of discolouration was a “foul play by extraneous elements”.

Giving a clean chit to the industrial units in the Eloor and Edayar region, board officials said that laboratory tests found that there was no chemical contamination in the samples collected from Pathalam and Varapuzha on Monday.

Abdurahman, chief environmental engineer at the regional office of the board here, said that silt deposit was high in the river. He also ruled out industrial pollution as the cause of the discolouration, but said the exact cause was still unknown.

The environmental surveillance centre of the board at Eloor monitored the ecological condition of the river on Tuesday.

Farook Sait, environmental engineer, said that the pH level (pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of the solution) in the samples collected from the river was around 6.3, which was normal; while the turbidity (the condition that makes water muddy) rose to a maximum of 75 ntu (nephelometric turbidity units) on Monday afternoon.

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