Filthy nullahs flow onto Sea View beach

Much is made of pollution at what is perhaps Karachi's most visited tourist destination - Sea View beach. Recent days have seen a swathe of garbage littered across the shore, creating outrage on social media. Yet the usual trash - plastic bottles, wrappers and so on - is not the only environmental hazard there.

For over a month, untreated water from the city's poshest locales has been diverted onto the main Clifton beach, left to flow into the sea and seep into the sand.

Nullahs have been opened onto the seashore with filthy water pooling up at several points, heedless not only of the hundreds of visitors who flock to the beach with their families but also the impact on marine life.

According to workers at one of these drains, they were opened up when heavy rains lashed the city in August, providing an 'outlet' for the stormwater that had nowhere else to go.

"There are six such drains," a senior worker, who was filling up one of the sites with sand, told The Express Tribune. "We are closing up this particular drain because an official is supposed to visit here."

Pointing to the toxic water, he claimed it was rainwater rather than sewage. "It is untreated and dirty. But there was no other way. Besides, it's not the first time rainwater has been released in this way. We usually open up these drains during the monsoon season," he explained.

Another worker chimed in to say there were two such drains that had regularly been releasing untreated water into the sea for years. "These," he gestured to the drains, "are temporary release points and will be closed up again soon."

A stench lingers on the beach around the murky streams of water trickling out from the drains. Visitors to Sea View covered their noses, trying to keep their children away from the rivulets. "This is more like standing near a gutter than a beach," complained one such tourist.

A police official deployed by one of the drains claimed that officials from the Cantonment Board of Clifton (CBC) had recently opened up the blocked gates of the nullahs after digging out trenches at different points on the beach, clearing a path for the water.

"I don't know if they will use these as permanent disposal sites, or if anyone will even drain out this polluted water from the beach," he remarked.

Though The Express Tribune made several attempts to contact CBC officials, none were available for comment. A CBC spokesperson said a senior official would brief The Express Tribune on the matter, but later refused to respond to repeated phone calls.

Meanwhile, other relevant authorities appeared to be in the dark about the opened nullahs.

A senior Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) official, while claiming ignorance of the activity at Sea View beach, explained that according to Section 11 of the SEPA Act, 2014, no one could dispose of untreated waste - whether solid or liquid - into the sea.

"This is criminal negligence!" he decried. "There is a certain standard for waste that can be released into the sea. If toxic or untreated waste is released like this, it is dangerous for humans as well as marine biodiversity."

Another SEPA official told The Express Tribune that his office was unaware of the matter too. "We will visit the beach and take samples of the released water for laboratory assessment," he stated.

Adviser to the Sindh chief minister on law and environment Barrister Murtaza Wahab, who also professed to be unaware of the disposal of water on Sea View beach, concurred that it was wrong to release untreated waste or water into the sea. He added that his department's teams would visit the site on Wednesday (today) to look into the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2020.