Agartala, May 27: Environmental degradation is well on course to replace insurgency as the burning problem in Tripura. Stating this at a seminar on Solid Waste Management to Combat Water Pollution in Tripura, US consul-general in Calcutta George Neil Sibley said the failure to manage the growing solid waste in the capital and other urban areas was beginning to pose serious health hazards.
The seminar was organised by the Association for Research on People and Nature, an NGO.
Environmentalist Biswendu Bhattacharya, who has studied Tripura extensively, said solid waste was accumulating in the town at an alarming rate. Bhattacharya said the Agartala Municipal Council (AMC)’s dumping yard for solid waste at Hapania had become a major source of contamination of air and water.
“When the AMC started using the yard, it was an open space. But now people have started living near the yard and street children rummage through the garbage in search of scrap,” Bhattacharya said, adding that the toxicity in the air and water around the dumping yard was abnormally high.
“A number of people living close to the dumping yard have contracted skin and bronchial diseases because of air and water pollution,” Bhattacharya said.
He added that the Tripura government had asked the urban development department to initiate steps against people who failed to discharge their solid waste properly.
“The AMC has been asked to identify a new site for disposal of solid waste,” he said.