Industries polluting canal supplying water to Karachi: SEPA

As industries in the Kotri SITE area, Jamshoro district, have again started to release hazardous wastewater in KB Feeder canal, which supplies water to Karachi, Sindh Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has served them closure notices.

SEPA Hyderabad region in-charge Imran Abbassi informed The Express Tribune on Monday that 25 industries, which are classified as wet units because they generate wastewater, have been issued the notice.

He added that 18 of these units have been directed to immediately shut down while the management of all the 25 units has been summoned in Karachi for a hearing before the SEPA Director General Naeem Ahmed Mughal.

According to Abbassi, the Combined Effluent Treatment Plant (CEPT) stopped functioning over a month ago and since then the industries in question have been discharging over 2 million gallons per day poisonous wastewater in the canal which is a drinking water and irrigation source for millions of people.

"Some of these factories have installed in-house treatment systems but we found that the treatment parameters in those units aren't up to the mark." He apprised that the managing Director of SITE Limited and that department's chief engineer in addition to chief engineer irrigation department have been served notices to explain why they have failed to perform their obligations.

The CETP was being operated by Kotri Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) reportedly with partial funding from SITE limited. But that funding also reportedly remained irregular.

The province's first CETP, built at the cost of approximately Rs1 billion, was built on the order of Sindh High Court given in a 2007 petition filed by a resident of Kotri. The former managing director of SITE, Abdul Rasheed Solangi, hired the consultant M/S International Design Group to prepare the PC-1 in coordination with the chief engineer, Abdul Waheed Shaikh.

The PC-1 was approved in April 2010, at a cost of Rs667 million. But the cost was later increased to around Rs1 billion.

The Sindh Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) registered an FIR against the SITE officials and the contractor in September, 2019, nominating 11 persons in the case under sections 409, 420, 467, 468, 477-A, 218 and 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for alleged corruption.

In August, 2022, the SEPA stated in a report that the CETP's samples were checked for five to six months but the treatment procedure did not meet Sindh Environment Quality Standards (SEQs).