Bhubaneswar: The civic body, in its efforts to increase the number of public and community toilets here over the past year, has failed to comply with the most basic guideline that would make the city clean - by not linking the facilities to the sewerage network.
In the absence of a link to the sewerage network, wastewater is being released directly into open drains and has triggered fears of contamination of drinking water since many pipelines run adjacent to the drains. Bhubaneswar has suffered from frequent outbreaks of waterborne diseases and local residents alleged that such a lax attitude put them at risk.
A realty check by The Telegraph on Monday revealed that several new facilities, apart from the older ones, have not been linked to nearby sewerage networks. The older ones continue to release wastewater into drains while the new ones store it in septic tanks.
Storing wastewater in the septic tanks, however, has not yielded desired results as the cesspool vehicles that transport it release it into drains because the civic body still doesn't have a wastewater treatment plant for safe its disposal.
In April 2015, the housing and urban development department came up with a new septage management guideline. The guideline made it mandatory for each toilet - be it a public or private - should have sewerage connection. The owners are barred from releasing wastewater directly into the drains. The caretaker of one such public toilet at Kharavela Nagar said the civic officials never turned up to the facility. "Wastewater from the toilet goes directly into the drains behind the building. The wastewater then travels to other nearby drains," he said on condition of anonymity.
The housing and urban development department had framed the new guideline after faecal contamination of drinking water was revealed to be the reason behind the outbreak of jaundice in several parts of the state and the city in the past. The disease had affected more than 50 persons in Bhubaneswar in 2016 and a few others in later years.
At present, the city has more than 100 functional public and community toilets, a rise from about 66 during the same time last year. "The civic body is putting our lives at risk by violating the sewerage management guideline. It is irresponsible of them," said Satya Nagar resident Jitendra Mohanty.
Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said a sewerage network project was under execution where older and new and household toilets would be connected. "The new toilets have their own septic tanks and our cesspool vehicles transport wastewater from the facilities. The water will be disposed safely at our upcoming wastewater treatment plants," said the mayor.
