Amid opposition from apartment dwellers on mandatory installation of sewage treatment plants (STPs), the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) plans to send out the final notification in a day or two to the government.
BWSSB chairman Tushar Girinath told Deccan Herald, “We plan to send a final notification to the government first and once they give us the green signal, steps will be taken to issue directions to apartments for implementation of the final notification immediately. We will have no consultations with apartments since we had called for objections to the draft notification from the public on March 18.”
Along with installation of STPs, dual piping is mandatory for apartment complexes with 50 or more flats, according to BWSSB’s earlier notification. Girinath said the components included in the draft notification have been retained in the final notification.
BWSSB engineer-in-chief, Kemparamaiah said, “The objective of the notification is to reduce water consumption and reuse it effectively. Apartments can always divert treated sewage water to SWDs and parks in their community apart from washing cars.”
Bangalore Apartments’ Federation (BAF) general secretary Srikanth Narasimhan, BAF president R Balasubramanian and other members said they were turned away whenever they asked for a draft notification from the BWSSB.
Narasimhan said, “We received the draft notification only on April 7. We feel the notification is illegal and illogical. How can we divert the treated sewage water to SWDs knowing that most of them are full of dirty water? We will continue our fight against the BWSSB’s notification. Moreover, BWSSB is lying that it received no objections since we had objected to their draft earlier.”
The members said old apartments that do not have STPs are connected to underground drains and it is impossible for them to install STPs due to various factors like safety, space constraint and cost.
Published 18 April 2017, 19:18 IST