The Hindu Business Line : Tirupur hosiery sector to get sludge disposal site soon

THE nearly five-year long effort to have a secured land disposal site for the hazardous wastes, generated in the form of sludge from Tirupur's hosiery wet processing industry, seems to have fructified with the environmental impact study (EIS) on the proposed site finally clearing the viability of the landfill project.

The EIS done recently by the Department of Environmental Studies of the Anna University has cleared that the 2.5-acre-site, an abandoned quarry at Karuppagounden palayam village near Tirupur, would form a safe/secure landfill for disposal of the hazardous wastes if the promoters of the landfill project go about following all the guidelines prescribed for erecting a safe landfill system, according to the Tirupur wet processing industry sources.

The State Pollution Control Board under the Coimbatore district administration had recently organised the public hearing of the Tirupur Land-fill project proposed by the Federation of Common Effluent Treatment Plants (FCETP) operators where the project details were displayed including the Anna University's EIA on the Tirupur Land-fill.

Estimated to cost around Rs 6 crore, the Federation had already spent Rs 2 crore on the project mainly in the form of purchase of 2.5 acres of the abandoned quarry land already bought by the Federation. Once the project is implemented, the landfill will offer capacity to dispose around two lakh tonnes of hazarduous wastes, said Dr Appusami, President of the Federation which provides a common platform for the 8 CETPs operating in Tirupur.

The absence of a safe disposal system needed to handle the sludge generated from the hosiery effluents has been daunting the 700-odd wet processing industries located in and around Tirupur including the members of the CETP. The growing volume of sludge piled up in the vicinity of the effluents treatment plants continue to remain a cause of concern both to the environmentalists and the CETPs. It is said that in the past five years, since the running of both the CETPs and the individual effluent treatment plants in Tirupur was streamlined, the total volume of piled up sludge in all the eight CETPs in the hosiery town is said to be around 40,000 tonnes. An equal quantity of sludge is said to be lying with the individual effluent treatment plants too, the industry sources say.

If the secured land-fill proposed becomes useable, it would enable the Tirupur processing houses to dispose of the sludge in a safe way for another five to eight years. By the time, if the wet processing units, at least the larger ones, opted for installing the advanced effluent treatment mechanism such as the reverse osmosis/multiple evaporation techniques aimed at minimising the effluent load through the system of salt recovery, it may result in further reducing the load of the sludge as well thereby leading to a lower sludge generation.

Dr Appusamy said that his federation would be making all efforts to speed up the project commissioning and it would be exploring the scope to make use of the competitive funding route available under the technology upgradation fund (TUF) for financing the landfill project estimated to cost around Rs 6 crore.

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