The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) has issued caution to the dyeing industry in Tirupur knitwear cluster that action would be taken against the Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) too if any of the affiliated units was caught for polluting environment due to individual lapses.
The action would include suspension of the activities of the respective CETPs, of which the individual dyeing unit was affiliated to, for a brief period since CETPs were obtaining government grants for ensuring zero liquid discharge (ZLD) norms in effluent treatment process.
The directive had come in the wake of the recent detection of indiscriminate discharge of effluents into the water bodies by three member units of two CETPs resulting in power disconnection to the said units.
In the past too, many individual units affiliated to CETPs were caught for violating the zero liquid discharge (ZLD) norms set by the Madras High Court in the effluent treatment process while closing all dyeing and bleaching units in Tirupur cluster in 2011 for polluting River Noyyal.
“We have decided to go a step ahead and tighten the noose on the CETPs too as such action was much warranted. It is because that the CETP operators, on many occasions, downplay the violations by member units stating as individual violations. But that cannot be accepted as CETPs is only formed as a common facility under consortium approach by bringing together a certain number of dyeing units and the plants have taken government grants for the benefit of members units to ensure ZLD norms”, TNPCB officials told The Hindu.
