Reluctant To Upgrade

Zero liquid discharge technologies can help textile dyeing units recycle water and reduce effluents released into rivers. Why are they resisting?

- Sugandha Arora Sardana and Sanjeev K Kanchan

THE WATER in Rajasthan’s Bandi river is strikingly blue in the stretch along the Pali district. But the blue is not natural and the water cannot be used. The colour is due to the presence of effluents discharged from over 500 textile dyeing units on its banks.

In May 2018, while hearing a 2012 public interest petition filed by Mahavir Singh Sukarlai of Pali nonprofit Kisan Paryavaran Sangharsh Samiti, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) declared the water of the river unfit for irrigation on the basis of an inspection report submitted by the tribunal’s monitoring committee. The report said that the level of total dissolved solids in the groundwater in the area was 9,000 mg/l, when the levels in the surrounding areas were 400-1,600 mg/l, and blamed the textile dyeing units for polluting the groundwater as well as the river. The contamination is taking place despite a 2012 Rajasthan High Court order that bans discharge of treated or untreated water in the Bandi.

The problem is not limited to Rajasthan. “There are over 140 textile clusters in India. Of these, dyeing units are concentrated in Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra, and the problem of river water pollution is equally widespread,” says M Madhusudanan, additional director, Central Pollution Control Board.