Mobile water treatment plants, producing half-litre water pouches at 75 paise in West Bengal, has caught the fancy of the Centre. It has asked the States to set up similar system in their areas which are prone to natural calamity.
Union Water and Sanitation Joint Secretary Satyavrat Sahu recently shot off a letter to all the heads of State Rural Development Departments to take a cue from West Bengal and has also allowed them to spend the 20 per cent of the NRWDP water quality fund to purchase the system.
The Government’s move follows suggestions from the Parliamentary Standing Committee members who during a recent visit to West Bengal found that the machines were useful during natural calamity, especially floods.
An official in the Ministry said that the truck-mounted mobile water treatment plants are also useful in the areas which have contaminated water supply. The machine has a reverse osmosis water treatment system to remove contaminants from untreated water.
The system can filter substances like bacteria, algae, viruses, fungi, iron, sulphur and other man-made chemical pollutants like cadmium, chromium, arsenic, magnesium, calcium, nitrates, fluoride and chloride which are on increase due to deeper drilling of aquifers.
Its purification technology can treat any type of contaminated water from septic tank discharge, brackish water and groundwater mixed with sewage and black water to sea ingress, industrial site waste and drainage (silt, sand, alkali, oil, chemical) and bio-degradable and non-biodegradable organic wastes, according to the details provided from the firm, Smart Aqua, which has produced such system.