No polluting matter into a stream, a well, a sewer or on land: the prohibition in the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, as a Thrissur hospital's sewage overflows onto a public road

Background

A septic tank at the chest diseases hospital attached to the medical college at Mulankunnathukavu in Thrissur breaches whenever the rain is heavy, and the sewage spreads over a public road and into the compound of the police station next door, where it stands for months. Water pollution of that kind is not only a civic failure; it is dealt with by a central Act. Section 24 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act carries the plain prohibition. Nobody, it says, is to knowingly cause or permit poisonous, noxious or polluting matter, measured against standards the State Board lays down, to reach a stream, a well, a sewer or land, whether that happens directly or at a remove. A second limb bars putting into a stream anything that would impede the proper flow of its water and worsen pollution. The section then lists what is not an offence, such as putting back into a stream the sand or gravel the stream itself deposited, and it lets the State Government exempt a person from the prohibition by notification in the Official Gazette, on the State Board's advice.