Alappuzha municipality has been named as the best small city in ‘innovation and best practices’ in the country in swachh survekshan 2020.
It bagged the award for implementing the decentralised waste water treatment system (DEWATS). The municipality came top in the category of cities with 1-3 lakh population. It scored 45 marks out of 50 in the urban local body-led innovation and 22 marks out of 30 in citizen-led innovation.
“Known as Venice of East in the State of Kerala and having a legacy of successfully practising decentralised solid waste management for the last four years, Alappuzha has taken a step in the direction of liquid waste management by working towards mitigating pollution of canals,” the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs said while announcing the results on Thursday.
The Ministry noted that the system included individual toilet facility to each house and a centralised water treatment system. “Greywater from every household is collected and sent to the settling tanks. The water gets purified when passing through the six chambers of the baffled reactor. It is further treated to 90% purity by passing through a gravel bed and a planted filter. All the tanks are constructed using reinforced concrete and a sump pump is used to pump the water from the settling tank to the baffled reactor,” it said.
Alappuzha bagged this achievement through a serious of interventions over the past three years. The initial efforts to avoid flow of polluted water into the canals started in 2017 under the aegis of Canalpy (a combined effort from academia, government, and the public to save the canals of Alappuzha).
Aided by cooperation of Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac and civic body, a Winter School was organised by IIT- Bombay and the Kerala Institute of Local Administration to understand the water and sanitation problems. This was followed by a Summer School in 2018 on the theme ‘rejuvenation of Alappuzha canals: decentralised solid and liquid waste management’.
Later as a pilot project, the Canalpy team intervened to improve the overall water quality of Chathanad Canal. The team prepared a total sanitation solution for the Chatanad municipal colony in order to deal with solid and liquid waste scientifically to provide improved sanitation to the residents.
With the help of an architecture firm based in Kochi, Canalpy achieved the goal by constructing individual toilets for each household, designing and constructing a decentralised wastewater treatment system to treat black and grey water and constructing an aerobic composting unit to deal with biodegradable waste.
The swachh survekashan 2020 recognised it as an innovation and best practice. Officials said the initiative was being extended to other parts of the municipality.
Illikkal Kunjumon, Chairman, Alappuzha municipality, said the civic body was the first to achieve this feat in the State. “This has been made possible with the active support of cleaning and health staff of the municipality.”
Alappuzha is ranked 152nd nationally in the swachh survekshan 2020, the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey, in the category of cities with 1-10 lakh population, improving its standing from 256, a year ago. The civic body scored 2,811.75 marks out of 6,000.
