Stop sewage flow from Kansal into Sukhna forest, Punjab told

CHANDIGARH: The UT administration has written a letter to the Punjab government to stop the flow of untreated water of Kansal village into the city’s forest area behind Sukhna Lake after a nudge from UT administrator V P Singh Badnore.
In the letter to the additional chief secretary (forests), and the additional chief secretary (environment), the UT’s chief conservator of forests (CCF) has said it wanted to draw their attention towards two critical issues related to eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) around Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary and the untreated water of Kansal village draining into the forest area of Chandigarh behind Sukhna Lake, requesting them to resolve them on priority. The UT has said the matter was also raised by Badnore during the third meeting of the UT Chandigarh Wetlands Authority held on June 17.
The minutes of the meeting said, “The chairperson of the UT authority has directed the forest department to take up the matter with Punjab for early solution of the problem, and accordingly, the authority members unanimously agreed to take up the matter.”

In the meeting, the agenda was “Untreated sewage from Kansal village being released into Chandigarh behind Sukhna Lake, contaminating the lake”. The minutes stated, “There is no treatment plant for sewage of Nayagaon and Kansal village and all of it from Kansal is entering the forest area of Chandigarh between Rock Garden and Sukhna Lake, damaging local ecology and contaminating Sukhna as well. Chandigarh has taken up the matter several times with Punjab to construct and operationalise sewage treatment plant (STP) …, but no concrete action has been taken.”
The issue pertains to sewage flowing from Nayagaon and Kansal villages and Saketri and Madadev Pur villages of Haryana into the forest area.
To deal with the sewage of Kansal and Nayagaon, the administration had recently chalked out a proposal to construct a new sewage treatment plant at Kishangarh.