The Hindu Business Line : Setting up effluent plants is Tirupur units' new dilemma

THE Madras High Court's permission to allow 490-odd dyeing/bleaching units in Tirupur to resume work on their complying with the Court ruling on part payment for installing `zero effluent discharge' equipment may have brought a breather for the dyeing industry.

At the same time, it has also pushed the dyers into the situation where they have to hunt for finance and suitable technology needed to handle the 100 million litres a day of effluent discharged by them.

The conservative estimate of cost (being made within the Tirupur dyeing industry) for putting up a workable model of reverse osmosis (RO) technology to achieve the `salt removal/zero discharge' stage comes to Rs 4-4.5 crore for a unit handling 10 lakh litres of effluent a day.

This translates into a total of Rs 450-500 crore to process the 100 million litres of trade effluents released by the Tirupur wet-processing units, besides the running cost or the operation and maintenance costs to be incurred by them on the RO plants.

Where will this money come from for an industry, which, till date, has considered any investment into treatment of effluents as one-way traffic on which there is `nil' return?

This seems to be the biggest dilemma that haunts most dyeing units, which also seem to remain unconvinced on the durability of the technology to handle the high volume of textile effluents with them.

"Whether technology is available or not, we need to implement the `zero' discharge and we have little time to ponder these as we have social obligation and to oblige the Court right now. This is despite the fact that we still have our own doubts on how foolproof the RO technology is. Yet we think we can go ahead and evolve the system through trial and error method," said Mr Kandasamy, President of the Dyers Association of Tirupur (DAT).

But are the fears of the Tirupur dyers on trying the RO technology borne out of their worry on the high cost of technology or finding the required money, more than its long-term viability?

The technology providers who are eyeing intensely on the evolving environmental angle in Tirupur wet-processing industry in the light of the recent Court initiatives, however, assert that there are technologies to treat much worse industrial effluents.

"We have at least five or six proven technologies to handle any type of industrial effluents, including the textile effluents. But the issue is that they all come at a cost," said Dr S. Sundaramurthy, Director (Technical), Creative Environment Consultants, Chennai.

Dr Sundaramurthy, whose firm has signed up an RO project execution for dyeing units coming under three common effluent treatment plant (CETP) companies in Tirupur, added that besides the capital cost for setting up the RO plants, the cost for the operation and maintenance of these plants are linked to the type of automation chosen by the promoters.

Some major environmental engineering companies operating at the national level are paying attention to Tirupur now.

These companies used to be wary in the past on taking up any effluent treatment projects at individual dyeing unit level, fearing that the unit may not be inclined to pursue the project till the final stages on cost consideration.

According to industry sources, the entry of Tamilnadu Water Investment Company Ltd (TWICL) has been instrumental in these companies looking at Tirupur again.

TWICL has expressed willingness to become a nodal agency for implementing viable effluent treatment solution for the Tirupur dyeing and bleaching industry cluster.

It has already tied up with 10 of the 18 CETP companies in Tirupur through MoUs to scout the technology as well as finance to implement the secondary and tertiary effluent treatment systems, which will include the RO plants as well.

TWICL is currently involved in finalising a feasibility report for the RO projects for these 10 CETP companies, comprising about 330 dyeing and bleaching units.

It is likely to come out with a detailed project report within a month.

In the meantime, the pollution control board officials in Tirupur are awaiting the High Court order to effect the restarting of the 493 units whose electricity disconnection would be revoked on the basis of the latest Court order.

With these units restoration, the number of units that are yet to be permitted by the Court for restarting operations stands at 92.

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