Goemkarponn desk
PONDA: Despite the rain intensity being low for many days, the water flowing from Opa iseems muddy and polluted.
Ponda locals seem concerned about the Opa-Khandepar river, which houses the Opa Treatment plant, flowing with muddy water twice in ten days.
Even though there was no rain, Chaturthi locals received muddy water from the tap, and secondly, locals again saw the river flowing brown with muddy water, which worried about their health and complained to the pollution board. The Ponda and Tiswadi is supplied treated water by OPA Plant.
Yesterday morning as the locals at Kodlim saw the river flowing with muddy, polluted water and following
complaints by Sandeep Parkar to the Member Secretary of GSPCB, the officials inspected the OPA water treatment plant and collected samples of polluted river water.
Sabbestin Barreto, Engineering Assistant and two other staff visited OPA Plant and collected water samples from the OPA river. They said the report about the sample would come in fifteen days.
Later the GSPCB officials also visited the river at Kodlim.
Earlier yesterday, the locals protested against one mining company at Kalay Dabal for releasing mining waste/wash water used to clean mining-related goods.
Local and complainant Sandeep Parkar who accompanied officials today at OPA Water Treatment for collection of samples, demanded with government and Pollution control board to find out the source of pollution of OPA river, whether it is from mining establishment at Kalay Dabal or Kodlim and take action people involved in releasing mining waste into the river.
He feared that the polluted drinking water would harm people’s health.
Sandeep also said that there is a total violation of laws at Kodlim. As per law, there should be a buffer zone of 100 meters between the river and mining pits; however, at Kodlim, there are total violations and no safety distance, with hardly an 8 to 10-meter distance between the Opa river and huge mining pits filled with water.
He said if government restores these pits by filling mud, then the water stored in the pits could meet the 45 per cent requirement of water in Goa.
“In case of a landslide, there could be a disaster,” he said.
He said because of these huge pits near the river, the river basin is facing water shortage as it leaks into mining pits which had gone at far much depth while river level is upward position.
Meanwhile, when asked about problems faced by the OPA Plant in the treatment of polluted water, the employees at the OPA plant said on the eve of Chaturthi that the water was highly polluted, and they faced a lot of problems with water filtering machinery.
Regarding muddy water flowing in the river since yesterday, the officials said they had no problem in filtering, and the water is also clean after treatment.
However, at the same time, the employees and officials were too reluctant to give official quotes along with their names.
The officials at the OPA plant admitted that muddy water flows from the river; however, they don’t know the exact source of polluted water.
