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KOCHI: Efforts by the Cochin Smart Mission Ltd ( CSML ) to construct a sewage treatment plant at Mundamvely in West Kochi had to be stopped due to protests from local residents. As a result, pipes worth Rs 39 crore procured for the project and the remaining amount of the Rs 200-crore project funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) had gone down the drain.

It was in the beginning of 2010 that the project was designed under Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP). The project was first delayed after Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority (KCZMA) and Kerala State Pollution Control Board (PCB) raised objection against setting up the plant by reclaiming the wetland at Mundamvely. Later, the authorities decided to set up the plant at Fort Kochi. But that plan too didn’t work following objection from local residents. After Kerala Water Authority (KWA), the nodal agency, failed to implement the project even after receiving an extension by six months, ADB cancelled the funding for the project in 2016.

Interestingly, Kochi corporation had not given sanction to dig over 100km of roads to lay the pipeline network as part of the project mooted by the local body itself. It was the protests from the local residents that forced the authorities to deny permission to dig up the roads. There were also stiff opposition from the locals against constructing sumps in different locations for storing the waste collected from the locality and pumping it to the treatment plant.

