Bring all illegal water units under scanner, says NGT

Bring all illegal water units under scanner, says NGT

A water purifying plant at Seith Nagar, in Egmore, which was shut down by the Green Tribunal, in Chennai on Friday
Making it clear that it was not against industries and was only concerned about the implementation of environmental laws, the National Green Tribunal (NGT), on Friday ordered an inspection of all packaged drinking water units operating without consent in and around Chennai to ascertain if the quality of water sold was as per regulations.
The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) would inspect the 92 units and forward the water samples to the Commissionerate of Food Safety and Drug Administration (CFSDA), which would then analyse the samples for potability and submit a correlative report to the tribunal by May 27. Till then, the units would have to remain closed.
The violations of the companies came to light after the tribunal took cognisance of media reports on the issue. The TNPCB then submitted before the bench in the previous hearings that only 23 of the 121 water-packaging units in and around Chennai had valid consents.
The others were then closed following intervention of the tribunal.
When the matter came up before the southern bench comprising Judicial Member M Chockalingam and expert member Professor R Nagendran on Friday, a few more companies moved applications challenging the closure orders issued by the TNPCB and urged for an interim stay on the orders.
The companies, as well as the South India Packaged Drinking Water Manufacturers’ Association, contended that the packaging units were not polluting companies and therefore did not fall under the provisions of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act invoked by the TNPCB to issue the closure orders.
Also, the companies argued that some of them did apply for consent to operate. But, this was denied by the Board citing the absence of a No Objection Certificate (NOC) for groundwater extraction from the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA).
“The fact is, the CGWA does not provide the NOC as the Madras High Court has banned extraction of groundwater for commercial purposes in the State till the Tamil Nadu Groundwater Management Act is notified. This has not happened,” argued the counsel for the companies and added that some of them have even been denied issuance of the applications for obtaining the consent.
However, counsel for the TNPCB, S Saravanan, contended that water purifying units employed the Reverse Osmosis (RO) mechanism.
The ‘rejects’ from the RO plants constituted effluents and, therefore, the board was well within its rights to invoke the provisions of the Water Act.
Further, the companies themselves had agreed at that time that they were operating all the while without valid consent from authorities, which was a clear violation of the law.
Passing orders, the bench said the “first and foremost thing” would be to ascertain quality of water supplied by the units that do not have valid consents.
Therefore, it directed the TNPCB to inspect the drinking water packaging units and place samples before the CFSDA for carrying out qualitative analysis to ascertain potability of water.