hyderabad locals have always known and struggled against pollution at patancheru though the rest of the country may be waking to its horrors only now in fact recent reports of pharmaceutical ingredients being dumped into water bodies at patancheru have given fresh impetus to a cause that local environmental groups have been fighting for over a decade the long drawn out battle between environmentalists and the andhra pradesh pollution control board appcb has passed through several rounds of presentations awareness campaigns petitions public protests and even gone to the supreme court to date no protest or court strictures has sensitised appcb it simply doesnt care say environmentalistsreferring to the study by environmental scientist joakim larsson in sweden s jeevananda reddy secretary of the forum for sustainable development fsd says larssons data is two years old the situation is much worse now because all earlier reports and protests have been ignored by the industries with the collusion of the pcb currently there are 190 companies in patancheru including bulk drug majors like dr reddys laboratories aurobindo pharma and neuland labs which together spew two million litres of effluents into streams like iska vagu and nakka vagu environmentalists wonder how these companies have been allowed to operate in gross violation of a supreme court order in 2000 that industries must carry effluents to the sewage treatment plant at amberpet and not dump into water bodies nearby even though the supreme court order has been ignored the pcb takes no action says activist capt j rama rao environmentalists have also fought for proper functioning of centralised effluent treatment plants cetps most cases of contaminated drinking water arise from indiscriminate disposal of effluents through tankers analysts suggest that if waste and effluents are treated separately and let out through pipes instead of tankers the situation might improve industries claim they do not have technologies to set up or improve treatment plants but when its possible in other states why not here questions reddy who was on a supreme court monitoring committee scmc that visited treatment plants in gujarat and maharashtra the scmc and the supreme court had clearly directed companies to meet the stipulated standards before the discharge but even that was ignored industries receive a sum of rs 6 crore for technologies and also enjoy a subsidy but they still resort to merely diluting industrial effluents with domestic sewage the appcb is dominated by industry representatives so how can you expect it to care for the common man allege activists buoyed by the renewed interest in patancheru environmentalists are gearing up for more action only last week fsd had written to the ap pollution control board appealing for inclusion of concerned citizenngo groups on the board this way at least we can voice the problems of civil society in board meetings says reddyothers hope for some sincere action sugata ganguly team leader of gamana an organisation that had conducted an independent study of the region and also joined greenpeace in a protest rally