Hidden in hindsight: Decoding desludging challenges in Uttar Pradesh

What happens after you flush your toilet? For most of us, it’s out of sight, out of mind. But across 700+ towns in Uttar Pradesh, this everyday act is tied to a growing environmental and health concern—how faecal waste is managed. In recent years, the state has built more than 50 Faecal Sludge Treatment Plants (FSTPs) to safely treat waste from septic tanks and toilets not connected to sewers. Many of the plants are, however, not getting enough sludge, bringing their capacity utilisation as low as 20 per cent, rendering them underutilised. Some plants, in contrast, have shown good numbers with regard to vacuum tankers emptying sludge at the FSTP.

Why are desludging numbers different for different towns? Why is sludge not being collected and treated as it should be? And what does that mean for you and your town? Let’s explore what a study by Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) uncovered.

The study: Digging deeper into desludging

To understand what’s behind the varying desludging numbers, CSE studied four towns in detail: Raebareli, Sitapur, Shikohabad, and Gonda. All have a daily treatment capacity of 32 kilolitres. Raebareli and Sitapur had low sludge load arrivals at their FSTPs. Shikohabad and Gonda reported relatively higher and more consistent numbers.

These differences raised an important question: What makes desludging—the emptying of septic tanks—work better in some places than others?

Ground level challenges

The study found that physical factors—like the size and type of containment systems and infrastructure issues are major reasons why desludging is irregular or delayed.

·         Oversized tanks: Many households have septic tanks that are much deeper than required. This means they don’t fill up quickly and are emptied far less often—sometimes only once in 10–15 years or more.

·         Hard-to-reach homes: In old town areas with narrow lanes, vacuum trucks can’t reach containment systems, having significant numbers of honeycombed containment systems that require infrequent desludging.

·         Open drains: A portion of households still discharge directly into open drains due to affordability or space constraints, bypassing a standardised containment tank altogether.

·         Lack of awareness: People wait until there’s backflow or unbearable smell before calling for emptying. Few know where the sludge goes afterward.

Contrasting sludge load numbers at treatment plants

Even when desludging does happen, not all sludge reaches the treatment plants. In towns like Raebareli and Sitapur, CSE found that private operators often dump the waste in open fields or drains to save time and cost. In some areas, illegal dumping is fairly prominent.

In contrast, Shikohabad has made desludging free for residents, and the plant is located close to most homes. Gonda has put stronger pressure on private operators to dump sludge at the FSTP. These steps have led to better use of the facility.

What’s working and why it matters

The study also revealed what makes desludging more effective:

·         Free desludging service: Towns like Shikohabad have removed cost barriers by providing free desludging services, resulting in increased number of households calling for sludge emptying—even when tanks are only half full.

·         Better monitoring by municipalities: In Gonda, strong oversight and enforcement in the form of fines has ensured that private vacuum tanker operators don’t just dump faecal waste anywhere.

·         Better strategic plant location: In Shikohabad, the plant is located in proximity to households from every corner of the town, reducing travel time & fuel consumption.

But even the first factor has an asterisk attached to it. The spikes in desludging numbers in Shikohabad are expected to be short-lived, caused by temporary factors like road repairs, prompting households to empty tanks.

The bigger picture

This isn’t just about a few towns. Across Uttar Pradesh, more than 700 towns still depend on onsite sanitation, i.e., septic tanks or pits. As of April 2025, 15 of 36 FSTPs and three of 19 co-treatment plants were operating below 20 per cent capacity, according to data collected by CSE. This poor utilisation raises questions about the efficiency of investments made in sanitation infrastructure. If treatment plants sit idle, untreated waste continues to pollute water bodies, groundwater, and the environment.

What needs to be done

The study doesn’t just point out problems—it offers implementable solutions:

·         Stronger municipal monitoring mechanism

Local governments must monitor and regulate private operators. Fines for illegal dumping should be enforced, and operators should be formally registered. The framework for such interventions are mentioned in the FSSM byelaws.

·         Implement scheduled institutional desludging

Government owned or managed establishments such as offices and community/public toilets, etc should have a schedule for regular emptying to create a baseline sludge load at the treatment plant.

·         Targeted awareness campaigns

All the vacuum tanker operators should be a part of capacity-building programmes covering safe desludging practices and fines and penalties related to indiscriminate dumping of sludge. Wards with tanks in majority could be identified and targeted campaigns to raise awareness about desludging could be introduced. 

·         Right-sized treatment plants

Many current plants were designed using mostly theoretical assumptions. A new improvised method suggested in the report takes into account the actual types of tanks and their sizes while filtering the households which do not require desludging for better planning.

·         Standardised construction of containment systems

Future septic tanks should follow national guidelines (IS Code 2470) to ensure they fill up and get emptied at regular, manageable intervals. This could be done at the time of approval of the plan/map at the municipality level.

Why this affects you

Infrequent desludging and indiscriminate dumping of sludge isn’t just a sanitation issue—it is about public health and environmental hazards. When sludge is dumped into open fields, it seeps into groundwater and contaminates drinking water sources.

Even if your own home has a good onsite sanitation system in the form of s septic tank, the actions of your neighbourhood matter. A poorly managed containment system down the street can spread disease, contaminate your water, or flood your road with backflow.

One flush at a time

Sanitation isn’t just about building toilets—it’s about managing what goes in them. Uttar Pradesh has made progress by setting up FSTPs, but unless sludge actually reaches these plants, the effort is wasted and thus the infrastructure created turns into white elephants.

As responsible citizens, we can:

·         Practice regular desludging

·         Ask questions about where our faecal waste is going

·         Support municipal efforts to clean up sanitation services

Because clean towns don’t start above the ground—they start beneath it.