Pune: The Central government will soon issue a notification about the standards for discharge of treated liquid waste in the sea, informed Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday.
He said there are no discharge standards at present and he had been struggling hard for this in the last two years. Fadnavis was speaking during the National Green Tribunal's regional conference here.
“As the secretary of the ministry of environment and forest is here, I would like to place my problem on record. For last two years, I have been struggling with the ministry. But now after much deliberations, I am told that the ministry will soon issue a notification about standards for discharge of treated liquid waste in the sea. The irony of the situation is Mumbai, which is the financial capital, is discharging 2,100 MLD of sewage into the sea every day. And we have the capacity that in the next four years, we can ensure that not a single drop of untreated liquid waste goes into the sea. After the notification, we will make the sea in Mumbai absolutely clean of sewage,” Fadnavis said in the presence of Ajay Narayan Jha, Secretary (Environment, Forests & Climate Change), Government of India.
Fadnavis also appreciated people who have been cleaning the Versova beach in Mumbai every day by collecting waste materials.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has called out the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on its lackluster attitude towards collection and treatment of sewage. Nearly 49 per cent of the sewage is outside the sewage collection system and is released without being treated, the CAG has said in its report on local bodies for the year ended March 31, 2016, which was tabled in both houses of Maharashtra legislature in August this year.
