The Hindu Business Line : Panel to go into environmental health problems in AP

THE State Government has decided to appoint a Committee on Environment Protection in its efforts to prevent environmental health problems such as fluorosis.

Announcing this while addressing a seminar on `Sustainable policy initiatives on fluorosis' organised by the Citizens Against Pollution (CAP) here recently, the Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, said the committee would comprise of leading environmentalists, activists involved in the movement, eminent scientists and academicians specialising in the subject.

Acknowledging the responsibility of the Government towards tackling the fluorosis problem in many districts across the State in general and Nalgonda district in particular, Dr Reddy held the previous Governments responsible for the gravity of the situation.

Dr Reddy also announced that the Government would consider providing pensions to all the seriously affected citizens in the fluorosis-prone areas of the State. Towards this, all the people crippled due to fluorosis would be declared handicapped, he said.

The Chief Minister said his Government was committed to implementing the Rs 600-crore project to address the fluorosis problem in Nalgonda, which is expected to benefit people in more than 1,100 villages.

Unregulated and deep drilling of borewells for ground water was one of the key reasons for the severity of the fluorosis problem in the district. Though the previous Government had enacted the Andhra Pradesh Water, Land and Trees Protection Act (WALTA) aimed at tackling the issue, it was mostly confined to paper, Dr Reddy said.

Owing to severe drought conditions, farmers had resorted to drilling more than 2,75,000 working borewells in Nalgonda district, while double the number are defunct. Dr Reddy said a single village called Visampally has more than 6,500 borewells and one farmer had resorted to drilling as many as 65 bores for cultivation of just eleven acres of land.

The Chief Minister announced that the State Government has now decided to strictly implement the AP WALTA from September 15 across all the districts in the State. Henceforth, it would be the responsibility of the borewell operators to obtain all necessary Government permissions for drilling of borewells and getting the geologists' opinion on the water availability in the spot of drilling.

Earlier, the CAP Convenor, Dr Purushottam Reddy, said a sustainable, permanent and easy-to-use solution for the fluorosis lay in consumption of surface water. According to him, the preventive measures include rainwater harvesting and watershed management in affected areas, regulating the drilling of borewells, taking up projects such as Srisailam Left Bank Canal and link canal between Godavari and Krishna rivers, setting up of full-fledged fluoride health units in each village and providing alternative livelihood options for the affected people.

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