Green panel orders water purity tests in packaging units

 

Chennai: The southern bench of the National Green Tribunal on Friday ordered the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the food safety and drugs department toconductsampletestsin private packaged drinking water unitsin and aroundChennai, that were being operated without valid licences from statutory bodiesfor years. In its submission to the tribunal on Friday, the pollution control board said out of 121 packaged drinking water units operating in and around Chennai, only 23 unit shave consent to operate. 

The bench, comprising Justice M Chokkalingam and technical member Prof R Nagendran, passed the interim orders on Friday, on the petitions filed by the South India Packaged Drinking Water Manufacturers’ Association and others, seeking relief from the PCB’s closure orders. When one of the counsels representing the units said they were extracting water from borewells in their own premises, the bench observed, “We have a borewell,so can we sell it?” 

The panel went on to add, “Had we not taken up the issue, you would have carried on the business for a century (without obtaining licences).” Earlier, additional commissioner of food safety department, B Vasakumar, summoned by the bench,said the facilities available in the King Institute’s lab could test only 15 samples a week and it would take more than six weeks for the 90 samples to get tested. 

The packaged drinking water manufacturers could not obtain statutory clearances from PCB or central ground water authority, since the Madras high court had, in February 2011, ordered the state government not to allow extraction of groundwater for commercial purposes till the Tamil Nadu Groundwater (Development and Management) Act2003 is notified. 

When the PCB’s counsel argued that without certification on the quality of the water supplied by the units, the closure order should not be vacated, the bench ordered the packaged drinking water units to obtain applications for consent to operate from the board, and the latter to make necessary inspection of those units. 

It ordered the food safety department to carry out qualitative analysis for water potability and for the PCB and food safety departments to submit a report on May27.