The East Calcutta Wetlands. A Telegraph picture

The state environment department is “in principle” against the Calcutta Municipal Corporation’s (CMC) plan to set up a water treatment park on the East Calcutta Wetlands, where the high court has banned construction activities.

The Rs 100-crore proposed plant — to be financed by the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, state government and the CMC — will come up on 20 acres and supply 30 million gallons of filtered water to adjoining areas.

“We are in principle against the proposal. The 12,500-hectare wetlands, a Ramsar site, was declared a no-development zone by the high court in 1992. There will be no end to bending rules if the plant comes up. The entire wetlands will be ruined,” said an environment department official.

Environment activist Banani Kakkar, on whose petition the 1992 verdict was delivered, has moved the high court against the proposed plant. She termed the proposal “illegal, ill-conceived and a threat to the ecosystem of the wetlands”.

Municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay said the CMC had chosen the wetlands plot as “land was not available in the vicinity”.

“We will go by the court’s directive… If the project falls through, the urban renewal mission funds from the Centre will go back. We wanted to set up the plant in public interest.”

Nitai Kundu, the chief technical officer of the East Calcutta Wetlands Authority, backed the project in court, saying the plot was on the fringes of the wetlands and that the plant would not eat up any water body.

But his submissions are contradicted by a study carried out by the civic authorities. It also pointed out that 2.08 acres of the 20-acre plot identified for the plant are “shallow water areas”. Defending its decision to set up the plant on the wetlands, the CMC had cited “arsenic poisoning” of the ground water in the adjoining areas.

But a CMC study revealed that the arsenic content in ground water samples collected from the area were below the permissible level. “It seems the authorities are distorting facts to facilitate the project,” alleged green activist Subhas Dutta.