Sultanpur Lodhi MLA Rana Inder Partap Singh raises concern over heavy metals in groundwater
Speaking on the environmental issues concerning Punjab during Zero Hour in Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday, Sultanpur Lodhi MLA Rana Inder Partap Singh said the state government needed to urgently verify the reports of toxicity in the underground water in the districts of the Majha belt, including Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur.
Studies by various agencies have revealed the traces of heavy metals such as arsenic and uranium and nitrates in the groundwater. “For about 20 years, we have been getting reports of toxicity in sub-soil water from the Malwa belt and now the waters of Majha have also been reported toxicity”, he said in the House.
He added that the outside agencies are telling us about the presence of heavy metals in the water, the state government should cross-check this, find the reasons and take corrective steps by making a detailed plan.
“The rock strata close to the aquifers might be containing heavy metals enriched and percolating in the aquifers. This also needs to be verified”, he said.
Ruling out the presence of impurities due to agriculture run-off, he said in that case it would have been uniform in all districts of the state which was not the case. The reports from four districts for arsenic, uranium, iron and nitrates have lots of variation, which was not realistically possible.
Raising the alarm of heavy iron content in the water which is 10 to 15 times the toxic limits, Rana Inder Partap Singh said there were at least 45 lakh redundant agriculture tubewells in the state and the farmers had a tendency of shifting the tubewells but the iron pipes are left in the earth which get rusted and oxidised iron percolates into the water.
“We need to make an elaborate plan to take these redundant pipes out of the earth”, he suggested and raised the alarm to study the future impact of plastic pipes used these days to bore water. The studies should not be in piecemeal. There should be comprehensive data analysis, he said.
