The district administration had just about turned their focus to preparing Erode for a smooth and smart local body polls, and the Sunnambu Odai, one of the major water channels, bore a sparkling blue hue.
Courtesy the textile processing and tannery units, which had embarked once again on its notorious practice of dumping untreated effluents into water channels, and that too, in broad daylight.
On Thursday and Friday, thousands of litres of untreated effluents were dumped into the Sunnambu Odai. “We noticed the flow of untreated effluent in the channel when an acrid smell enveloped our colony,” S. Mariappan, a resident of R.N. Puthur, said.
Most of the textile processing and tannery units in the district do not treat the effluents and dump them in water-carrying channels including the Sunnambu Odai and Kalingarayan channel. The administration earlier managed to control the discharge of untreated effluents to a great extent by conducting frequent checks and shutting down the units found violating the rules.
“But the short time left for the local body polls has turned out to be an advantage for the processing units.
The officials are busy with the elections, and have little time left for surprise checks and monitoring of the activities of the processing industry. As a result, the units have begun letting out the untreated effluents in water sources once again,” R. Selvam, a farmer, said.
The units normally let out the effluents after midnight. But nowadays, huge quantity of toxic effluents was being discharged into water sources in broad daylight, residents of BP Agraharam said.
The problem may aggravate in the near future as more number of unauthorised textile processing units are coming up in Erode town and its surroundings.
