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Zilla panchayat president Dinaker Babu said water conservation is the need of the hour.

Speaking after inaugurating a two-day workshop organised for solid and liquid resource management by district administration, the president lamented that although the district has high literacy rate, there is low response to water conservation and waste management. He said rain water harvesting units should be set up everywhere to overcome the water scarcity in the district during summer. The depleting groundwater is a severe threat for the sustainability of human lives. He also emphasised on the re-use and recycling of waste.

He called upon the gram panchayats to take up awareness at grassroots level for the efficient management of solid and liquid waste.

Vellore Srinivasan, project director of Indian Green Service Limited, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, said Udupi district will be declared garbage-free district by October 2, 2018. The strategies are planned to work accordingly with the cooperation of the district administration. The target will be reached before the actual deadline of October 2, 2019.

(Alarming and most disturbing photographs of River Swarna from the file pictures of www.kemmannu.com)

He said the pilot project will be taken up in any one of the gram panchayats on August 15. Quoting value of Bengalauru’s garbage to be at least Rs 27 crore for one month, he said the garbage value is high. There is a need for resource management strategies, he opined. Udupi will be the first district taken up for the project in the entire southern and northern India, next only to Kachal district in Silchar in North East, he said.

Deputy Commissioner Priyanka Mary Francis said the problems of solid waste management can be overcome only when garbage is considered as resource rather than waste.

She said sold waste management is a huge problem in Udupi and there is hardly any availability of government land to build solid waste management units.

The problem is snowballing into a major threat, she felt. However, the district has been listed among five open-defecation-free districts in the state, she said.