Pollution unabated
A change in the nature of effluents rendered CETPs redundant in Pali, home to more than 1,000 registered and unregistered textile processing industries. These industries generate effluents to the tune of about 35 million litres per day (mld). The first CETP came up in 1983. When a feasibility study for the next two CETPs was carried out, the effluents from the dyeing industry were alkaline in nature. "We had to buy as much as five tonnes of sulphuric acid to neutralise our alkaline effluents,' informs M L Gandhi, a local industrialist and member of the trust that runs the CETPs. Earlier the industries used to be of hand-processing type, where all the work from dyeing to printing was carried out manually.
In the mid-1990s, the National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, which surveyed Pali, suggested that if a few industries change their operations to the power-processing type (processing synthetic cloth), the problem of alkaline effluents would be solved. In power-processing, the effluents are acidic in nature because of the use of sulphuric acid in certain processes. So by mixing the acidic effluents with alkaline, the problem could be solved and treatment through a CETP would be much easier. With changes in market demand and in economic policies, such as increasing the price of pure cotton fabric, many industrialists shifted to power-processing as it involved processing of synthetic fabric, which was in high demand. And the effluents from the industry turned predominantly acidic. "Seventy per cent of the effluents from power processing is acidic because of the use of concentrated sulphuric acid,' says Ashok Kumar, regional officer (Jodhpur), Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board.
The CETPs, which had been constructed to handle only alkaline effluents, have now become redundant and all the effluents are still going untreated into the Bandi river. "It is impossible to treat the acidic effluents till the time we can make massive in-plant changes,' admits Jagat Singh, a chemist at the CETP. "We cannot release highly acidic effluents into the drainage system for the city. It has already destroyed many parts of the drainage system,' says A R Khan, Pali's district collector. Moreover, industries located on the riverbank have developed an interesting modus operandi to discharge the acidic effluents. These industries have constructed long underground pipes that end up in the Bandi river bed. Today, Pali's pollution woes have, in fact, worsened.
Related Content
- Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding quarrying activities carried out in the Eco-Sensitive Zone of Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary, Balasore, Odisha, 14/08/2023
- Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding construction of toilets in flood plain zone of river Ganga by the Municipal Corporation, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, 18/05/2022
- Phasing out unabated coal: current status and three case studies
- Health and economic impacts of unabated coal power generation in Delhi-NCR
- Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding riverbed mining in Dumka district, Jharkhand, 10/06/2020
- Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding pollution caused by the discharge of industrial effluents in Taloja industrial area, Mumbai, Maharashtra, 03/09/2019