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Ishaq Tanoli
February 5, 2023
KARACHI: The Cantonment Board Clifton has informed the Sindh High Court that a sewage treatment plant (STP) has been installed at Seaview to treat the wastewater before discharge into the sea.
The CBC informed a two-judge bench that a ‘sump pump’ discharging sewage directly into the sea at the same point had been demolished.
The bench headed by Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi was hearing a petition filed by some non-governmental organisations in 2017 against release of sewage and industrial waste into the sea.
At the outset of the hearing, the lawyer for the CBC filed a report along with some photographs and a statement in compliance with earlier court orders.
Construction work on sewerage line, to utilise full capacity of 2MGD plant, will be completed by March 31, court told
He stated that the treatment plant was installed at Seaview and the same had been operational.
The counsel for the petitioners sought a copy of the report and requested time to go through it.
The bench directed the officials of the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency to be in attendance on Feb 27 to assistant the court on the subject issue.
The CBC in its report stated that the Defence Housing Authority had constructed a sewage treatment plant (Kublai Khan STP) at Abdul Sattar Edhi Avenue in April 2021 and the sump pump operating at the same place releasing untreated water into the sea had been pulled down.
It maintained that the capacity of the STP was two million gallon per day (MGD) and the current flow into the plant was 0.40 MGD.
In order to utilise its maximum capacity, the CBC was going to complete a sewerage line by March 31 connecting Sewerage Pumping Station (SPS-I Saba Cross, Muhafiz) and SPS-2 (26th Cross Muhafiz) Phase-VI with SPS-8, Phase-V, which would release sewage having flow of 1.50 MGD in the STP and ultimately the sea would take treated sewage of these pumping stations.
The report further stated that besides Kublai Khan STP, the DHA was already maintaining another STP at Golf Club with a capacity of around 1MGD.
It also maintained that the CBC was not dumping any solid waste in the sea as the garbage was being collected and transferred on a daily basis to the place designated by the Sindh government.
The CBC conceded that previously, it had outsourced the sanitation mechanism through conservancy contractors, but the system could not give desired results and now the board was itself providing such services and also upgraded its existing capacity by procuring new machinery.
The World Wide Fund for Nature and some other NGOs had petitioned the SHC in 2017 against dumping of sewage and industrial waste into the sea.
The petitioners had informed the SHC that the sea was being polluted by the sewage at Seaview near the Chunky Monkey amusement park and a fast food outlet.
Earlier, the SHC had issued several directives to CBC and DHA officials to file comprehensive reports with regard to release of sewage and dumping of industrial waste into the sea and also asked the sanitation branch of the CBC to file comments regarding release of raw sewage and dumping of industrial waste into the sea.
Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2023
