Waste flows as CETPs rust
10 yrs after SC plays monitor, plants idle as admn, industrialists slug it out
Express India - June 14, 2006
By Baisakhi Roy
A DECADE on, the Supreme Court’s monitoring of industrial effluents that pollute the Yamuna appears to have had little impact.
Fifteen Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) were to have been set up across 25,000-odd industrial units to treat effluents before they are emptied into the Yamuna.
Ten years after the first deadline, 10 CETPs have been set up. But instead of treating effluents, the plants are lying rusted and broken even as the administration and industrialists slug it out.
There are 28 industrial estates in the Capital comprising more than 25,000 small and medium-sized factories and they produce 400 million litres a day (mld) of effluents. Nearly 380 mld of this flows into the Yamuna untreated, according to figures released in the Central Pollution Control Board’s latest annual report.
The effluents are a dangerous cocktail of chemical compounds — phosphate, boron and fluoride — and make the Yamuna toxic.
One of the first CETPs constructed in the acrid surroundings of the Wazirpur Industrial Area has been plagued by rusty hardware as a result of rainwater washing over it year after year.
The Wazirpur plant lay submerged in water during monsoon for the fourth successive year, but authorities regard this a minor problem. “These are technical plants which are sometimes plagued by such snags. It has been repaired since then,” Wazirpur plant officials said.
The flooding of this plant figures prominently in the latest Environmental Pollution Control Act.
Other plants that have come under attack are the Okhla Industrial Area plant which has the “most abysmal” performance figures.
EPCA experts have demanded a probe into why only 1 mld of waste is being treated when the plant has the capacity to treat 24 mld.
In the case of CETPs, acrimony between agencies is creating problems. The construction and maintenance of all 10 working plants is the sole responsibility of the Delhi State Industries Development Corporation (DSIDC) which delegated the work to a CETP society; one such society was placed in charge of a plant.
The societies have to submit a monthly report of their activities to the DSIDC.
The problem starts at the source for DSIDC is at loggerheads with the heads of these societies. “The societies owe us more than Rs 45 crore which they haven’t cleared in the past three years. We can’t co-operate with them unless they pay up,” Jalaj Srivastav, the DSIDC MD says.
As part of the arrangement, the Centre has to finance 25 per cent of costs, the Delhi government another 25 per cent and the CETP societies the remainder. Srivastav says the Centre still has to cough up Rs 36 crore and the societies Rs 56 crore. “Each CETP on an average requires around Rs 50 lakh for maintenance. There has to be a continuous flow of funds to take care of these costs,” he adds.
The treatment plant is ready but the channels conveying the affluents are not in place. As of now, 53 mld of affluents reach the plants, the total capacity of which is 218.2 mld. There is heavy silting in the sewage connections because of which enough effluent doesn’t reach the plants.
“Most of the waste doesn’t even reach plants in Jhilmil, Badli, SMA Industrial Area and Lawrence Road,” says P M Ansari, Additional Director CPCB and an EPCA member.
The apex court formed a monitoring council to oversee the project but council members say they have had an unpleasant experience working with officials in Delhi.
“Everyone drags their feet here. I fail to understand how a 10-year-old issue is in limbo because some dues have not been cleared. Forget that, some of the plants are already nearing a state where they will be dysfunctional. We don’t hope for things to get better. It’s much better to monitor matters in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat,” Claude Alvarez of the Supreme Court Monitoring Council (SCMC) says.
This is where the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute comes in. The engineering body was asked to design the basic structure of the CETPs. Experts from NEERI visited all 10 plants in June after pressure from the SCMC.
“Glaring flaws were pointed out. Machines were found broken, wrong chemical combinations of treating agents were revealed and the experts themselves expressed a doubt over the basic design of the plants,” a CPCB official who was part of the team said.
The SC had asked all agencies to submit a report but they have failed to do so in time. No new date has been set. “This is the biggest proof of a disaster called the CETP. Even the highest court of the country has given up,” Alvarez says.
SOURCE:
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstor ... sid=157192