Of the 9 units, one was not at all operating effluent treatment plant
TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Around nine restaurants and hotels in Colva run the risk of closure as the Goa State Pollution Control Board on Friday served them notices to show cause why the Board should not revoke the consent to operate for violation of provisions under the Water Act.
These establishments have been served a week’s time to reply to the show-cause notice as sample testing of the waste discharge revealed (biological oxygen demand) well beyond the permissible limits.
GSPCB Chairman Jose Manuel Noronha informed that the notices to the nine units have been issued under the Water Act after inspection revealed that the BOD level was beyond the limits. “Of the nine establishments, we have found that one of the units was not at all operating the effluent treatment plant. We have taken serious cognisance of the same and action will be initiated against the erring unit,” Noronha warned.
He said action against the nine hotels and establishment has been initiated after the GSPCB conducted sample testing of 20 hotels and other establishment at Colva a week ago. In fact, Noronha had himself headed the 17-member team to Colva after a high-level expert committee had come out with a damning report on the contamination of the creek.
The expert committee had investigated into the Colva creek contamination after the Colva Civic and Consumer Forum Secretary Judith Almeida knocked the doors of the High Court with a plea to save the creek from pollution. It has been the contention of the Colva Civic and Consumer Forum that the hotels and establishments release their sewage and other waste water in the storm water drain, which finds its way into the creek, leaving the water body contaminated.
