THE Guntur Municipal Corporation is perhaps the only corporation in the country to have started an ecological/environmental budgeting. It is helped by the Bologna Municipal Corporation of Italy in this.

The GMC is one of the partners in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) project, under which a city local government sets itself a target for conserving its environment/ecology by improving the quality of water it supplies to its citizens, the way it handles solid waste, greening the city or improving the atmospheric air quality.

The European Union-sponsored project ran for three years before coming to a close in December 2007.

By then, it had effectively changed the garbage clearance scenario in the city and improved the quality and quantity of water that the GMC supplied to its citizens.

The GMC procured mobile kits for monitoring 14 quality parameters. Flow meters were installed at all water storage tanks for auditing. As a result, water supply saw a noticeable improvement.

With the door-to-door collection of garbage, Guntur’s main roads and bylanes look cleaner now. Officials are now serious about improving collection and disposal of solid waste in a scientific way.

Bohol in the Philippines and Vaxjo in Sweden also participated in the E.U. project.

Ramesh Susarla