Efforts on to cut plastic & septic waste dumping into Vembanad Lake

Kochi: As part of its attempt to enforce sustainable tourism and bring down the water pollution caused by the houseboat industry in Alappuzha, the district administration proposed setting up a sewage treatment plant (STP) with CSR funding.District collector Alex Varghese said the houseboat industry functions well above its carrying capacity and it became important to regulate the use of plastic and paper packaging in the houseboats. "We had a series of discussions with the houseboat owners' association and came up with suggestions to reduce the use of plastics. This includes using ceramic or steel plates, as many are using disposables and dumping them into the water," he said. He said that, to clean the water bodies, the stakeholder local bodies were asked to mandatorily set aside funds for cleaning up the waters on their side of Vembanad Lake. Allocation was to be based on the three-tier panchayat and municipality level. "In most local bodies, people are pumping their septic waste into the water. We want to propose setting up a STP to treat sewage waste and prevent it being pushed into the water, which makes the district vulnerable to health outbreaks," he said. A recent report by Centre for Water Resources Development and Management on the recreational carrying capacity of Vembanad Lake for sustainable tourism was submitted to State Wetland Authority Kerala (SWAK). It found that instead of the intended density of one houseboat per 20 acres, the current situation in Vembanad Lake was closer to less than 10 acres per houseboat. The safe carrying capacity is 461, while there are nearly 954 houseboats, along with 241 shikaras, 404 motorboats, and 1,625 country boats. "Our concern is that there are several unregistered houseboats too, and we will try to start strictly enforcing regulations," the collector said, adding that they hoped to loop in CSR support to implement some of the green measures.