Sewerage treatment plants: much ado about nothing

Despite Rs 84 crore having been spent on various projects involving sewerage treatment plants the problem of pollution in Buddha Nallah remains unresolved.

Despite Rs 84 crore having been spent on various projects involving sewerage treatment plants (STPs),the problem of pollution in Buddha Nallah remains unresolved. Effluents,cow dung and many other pollutants continue to flow into the STPs along with the Municipal Corporaton (MC) sewer,thus not only aggravating the problem,but also hampering the functioning of STPs. Take the case of Jamalpur STP. It was built with a capacity of 48 million litre water per day (MLD),but is getting a daily inflow of more than 60 MLD and most of it comes from industries. The flow is laden with heavy metals such as nickel,cadmium,cobalt and chromium. SDO Tarsem Singh said,We keep informing the Pollution department,but most of the metals go untreated from the STP. Moreover,the industry has not yet started sending its effluents to the common effluent treatment plant due to which the flow is more than the capacity of the STP. Hence,only 48 MLD water is treated and the rest water goes untreated in buddha nallah. The heavy metals are a cause of concern as they fall directly into the Buddha Nallah and further into the Sutlej river.

Even the Rs 36 crore Bhattian STP is faced with similar problems.

The content of heavy metals,however,is a little less,said officials. The STP treats only sewer water and hence industrial effluent goes untreated. This problem is an old one,but so far it has not found any solution,although the industrialists claim that they treat their water before discharging it. The Balloke STP,which has a capacity of 152 MLD water,receives nearly 80 per cent of the discharge. The inflow,however,is full of cow dung.

Executive engineer Madan Lal said,This is affecting the working of our STP. We have to deploy more manpower to clean the settled cattle dung in our machines. Dairy owners are not following the norms and are discharging the cow dung directly into the MC sewer lines,which is affecting the functioning of the STP.

He added,The Punjab Energy Development Authority (PEDA) has been asked to conduct a meeting with dairy owners to solve this problem because we are getting tons of cattle dung every day.

Rs 8 cr to clean sewer lines of city
Despite a ban being imposed on the throwing of industrial effluents directly into MC sewer lines and instructions being issued to dairy owners to not dispose cattle dung,nothing seems to be brought into practice. Municipal Commissioner A K Sinha has indicated they are going to spend Rs 8 crore on the thorough cleaning of main sewer lines of the city,which are lying choked,in order to ease the flow in the STPs. Once this is given a go-ahead by the Finance and Contract Committee,machines will be brought in from metros to clean these lines.

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