Twenty-five to 30 million litres of treated sewage flows every day from the Coimbatore Corporation’s sewage treatment plant (STP) in Ukkam into River Noyyal.
Sometime ago, this was around 20 million litres a day and a couple of years ago, 10 -15 million litres a day.
The treated sewage is the output from the STP, which the Corporation commissioned in 2011 as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) project.
Six years after its commissioning, the STP treats around 40 million litres a day (mld) - the sewage it gets from R.S. Puram, Town Hall and other old town areas. The STP’s installed capacity is around 70 mld, though.
After commissioning the plant, the Corporation said that it would sell the treated water to farmers or golf course owners, industrialists or others who might be interested in buying the water.
After preliminary discussion, the Corporation called for expression of interest in 2013 saying that the prospective buyers should indicate their use, quantity required and the methodology they would use to convey the water.
Two years later in December 2015, the Corporation Council passed a resolution to prepare a feasibility report to reuse the treated water and appoint a transaction advisor for implementing the project.
As of February 2017, the Corporation is still working on the project.
Sources in the civic body say that the proposal is to convey the treated sewage from the STP to a collection well about a km away and use the existing infrastructure to take it to the lagoon in Vellalore.
And from there, if farmers, industrialists or golf course owners were interested, they could take and use the water.
To convey the water from the STP to the well, the Corporation should lay pipeline for over a km, the sources add.
The failure to sell the water comes in the backdrop of the delay in commissioning two more STPs that were conceived as part of the JNNURM project.
The Corporation is caught in a legal tangle with residents for the Nanjundapuram STP and awaiting National Highways permission to cut across Trichy Road to convey sewage to the Ondipudur STP.
Senior officials say that very soon the Corporation will be able to complete the work in the Ukkadam STP. Even if it does not find buyers for the treated water, it will not be much of a bother because the civic body will use the water to water the trees there.
Likewise, it is also hopeful of a favourable outcome to the legal tangle and permission from the National Highways for laying the pipeline.
