Five medium standard hotels of some powerful owners were sealed on Tuesday by the district administration in presence of the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) officials for causing pollution of sea water and the beach. The SPCB had earlier issued show cause notices to 12 hotels of the tourist city here for polluting the beach and had asked them to install waste water treatment plants before releasing effluents into the sea or municipal drains. The hotels were running without permission from the SPCB. While one hotel operator got a stay order from the High Court on Tuesday, the district administration in presence of the SPCB regional manager disconnected power connection of five big hotels and sealed their generator rooms. The sealed hotels include Camelia, Sea Gull, Haven, Trimurti and Naik Beach Resort. Some hotel owners and staff tried unsuccessfully to prevent the closure, but the armed police contingent accompanying the team facilitated the closure operation. SPCB regional manager Hadibandhu Sadangi told mediapersons that Chariot Resorts, Laxmijyoti, Niladri, Prabhupada, Sona International and Hotel Sreehari are the remaining six hotels which would be closed on Friday. According to Beach Protection Council chief and noted environmentalist Jagannath Bastia, most of the hotels located along the beach were releasing untreated waste water into the sea, polluting the sea water. They were repeatedly asked by the SPCB to treat the waste water inside their hotels before releasing it to drains. Most of them do not have consent from the SPCB to operate and they were instrumental in accelerating pollution on the beach. This time the SPCB resolved to deal the polluting hotels with a heavy hand as the test of sea water on Puri coast revealed alarming level of pollution. These steps would have been taken much earlier, he added. The closure operation has left many other hotel operators in panic.