What treatment?

Regulation has not worked for drug industry

It is not as if industry and government have not worked to control pollution. Two common effluent-treatment plants (cetps) were set up in Andhra Pradesh. The Patancheru cetp, which started functioning in 1994, has a capacity of 7.5 million litres a day (mld), while the other at Jeedimetla in Ranga Reddy district, established in 1989 and run by Jeedimetla Effluent Treatment Limited (jetl), can treat 5 mld. The cetps were set up so that effluents from small-scale units could be collected and treated.

These plants remain underutilized, though the manufacture of drugs has increased manifold. Currently, jetl utilizes only 33 per cent of its installed capacity, and industrial waste is only 14 per cent of the total waste it treats.Similarly, only 20 per cent of petl's capacity is utilized. Nobody can explain why this is happening. Is it because wastewater generated by the units has decreased in spite of increased production? Or is it because the industries are generating wastewater which is not reaching the cetp?

The problem is partly because effluents are transported to the cetps in tankers. And nobody has an account of the total wastewater that should be transported. appcb says it does not have up-to-date data on water use and effluent generation. Board officials were reluctant to share even 'old' data with dte , saying it was no more relevant. Their only excuse was that product changes were so frequent that keeping track of effluent generation was a difficult proposition. However, they accept that the cetps provide for roughly 17-27 per cent of industrial units in their catchment areas (see table Unaccounted waste). Tiwari of appcb, however, says, "Since July 2007, it is mandatory for all industries to become members of the cetps and send their effluents for treatment."

The cetp management maintains that the wastewater quantities are lower because some units have shut down and others have individual treatment systems. In July 2007, an affidavit filed by appcb in an ongoing case on cetps in the supreme court also accepts this version. It says, "The reduction of effluent is due to in-house treatment by some of the industries."

According to existing regulations, units that are not members of cetps are expected to treat their effluents themselves. To do this, they have to set up systems to treat and recycle effluents or install multiple-effect evaporators (mees) to deal with effluents with high total dissolved solids (tds). An mee is an apparatus for efficiently using the heat from steam (generated in boilers) to evaporate water from effluents and convert tds into a concentrate, which is then sent to a hazardous-waste-disposal site. But appcb officials are not ready to commit themselves about whether these systems have been set up or whether they work.

Local people say effluents are just dumped. "During the monsoon it is a common practice for units to illegally dump effluents along the Hyderabad-Pune highway," says Anil Dayakar, executive director, gamana, a Hyderabad ngo. Members of a task force constituted by appcb to check illegal dumping say dumping is prevalent. Activists say only a few violators are booked.

"There are several industries dumping wastes into water bodies and land," says S Jeevananda Reddy, a member of the Hyderabad Local Area Environment Committee, set up by the supreme court-appointed hazardous waste monitoring committee (scmc). In the Bollaram industrial area, dte found jet-black effluents flowing out in pipelines. In May 2006, the local area committee had analysed samples from a lake in the area, Asanikunta, and detected eight chemical compounds, which matched with effluents from 10 units in Bollaram.

There is a reason why 'dumping' may be the preferred option. In a 1998 order, the apex court had laid down minimum standards for effluents received by cetps. According to this direction, effluents which exceed tds and cod of 15,000 mg/l will be rejected. Industry finds it difficult to meet these standards because of high use of salts. Says a March 2004 report by a fact-finding committee constituted by the Andhra Pradesh High Court during 2001-2003 petl turned away 357 tankers. Local citizen groups say their contents were dumped into drains. "If this is happening it is appalling," says an scmc report of October 2004.

Just diluted
cetp managers say they use domestic sewage to dilute effluents. This, of course, still means toxins are not treated, merely diluted. After years of confabulations and in spite of the intervention of the apex and high courts there is little consensus on what is to be done. Frequent changes make for confusion about which standards are to be followed (see table PETL divergence).

Resistance problem
The plants do not work partly because they were not built to work. This was accepted by appcb in an affidavit to the apex court in early 2007. It said biological systems used in cetps were not designed to treat non-biodegradable and highly toxic waste.

The Gteborg University study pointed out that toxic pharmaceutical waste would impair the performance of microorganisms in biological systems. It also said antibiotics in effluents could be playing a dangerous role in making the treatment more ineffective. "Of further concern is that the industrial effluent is mixed with human sewage within the plant to improve biological treatment efficiency. There is a risk that pathogens will be exposed to antibiotics for prolonged periods. Ciprofloxacin is genotoxic and induces horizontal transfer of resistance between different species of bacteria, effects that may be observed at concentrations as low as 5-10 g/l. Therefore, the recipient waters and the treatment plant itself may be spawning grounds for resistant bacteria," the study said.

Treatment is expensive, partly because very little of capacity is utilized. The unit cost at petl is Rs 78 per kilolitre and at jetl Rs 166 and Rs 583 per kl for the biological system and mee. Industry is worried that stringent regulations will raise costs further.

Disposing treated waste
It matters where the treated effluents will be disposed of. In Patancheru, industry and regulators are constantly looking for new ways to dispose of treated effluents. Currently, treated effluents are discharged into Iskavagu, a monsoon drain which travels 1.2 km to meet Nakkavagu, another monsoon drain, and finally meets the Manjira river, in contravention of an apex court order (see timeline Sordid saga). jetl's treated effluent is discharged into a 9.5-km pipeline connecting to municipal sewer flowing into the Amberpet sewage-treatment plant, which treats Hyderabad city's waste. The treated effluents--of Hyderabad and industry--are then disposed of into the Musi river.

Now petl wants to do the same. In 2000, the Central Pollution Control Board had suggested what is called the 18-km pipeline (actually 22.5-km pipeline) to connect it to the municipal sewer (Kukkatpally-Secunderabad main) at Balanagar which then travels over 30 km into the Amberpet plant. The apex court endorsed this plan (see map Wasting journeys). But activists did not. "This is only a camouflage. It will transfer pollution from Patancheru to the Musi and villages downstream. The dilution with sewage will only bring down concentration of pollutants. The overall pollution load will remain the same," says J Rama Rao, chairperson, Forum for Better Hyderabad, an ngo.

The Amberpet plant's capacity is being augmented from 113 mld to 339 mld at the cost of Rs 84 crore and its treatment system upgraded. But engineers are worried about the impact on the plant (which is a biological system) once effluents are mixed. appcb says cetps must be upgraded and discharge standards made more stringent.

As a result the pipeline is stuck. scmc has directed appcb not to allow discharge of treated effluents into the Amberpet stp. In January 2007, the pipeline was completed at a cost of Rs 12.5 crore, but petl continues discharging effluents into Iskavagu and appcb is still looking for a way out of the impasse.

How clean?
It also matters how clean treated waste will be. The management of cetps claim they meet the effluent standards specified for disposal into sewers, which are much more lax compared to standards for disposal into water bodies. In October 2004, scmc took strong objection to relaxed inlet and outlet standards and directed appcb to specify stringent norms. In response, on August 5, 2005, the board issued directives to both cetps modifying inlet and outlet effluent discharge standards. Managers of the effluent plants were directed to install necessary equipment to "ensure that treated effluents meet the reusable standards".

This direction was upheld by the apex court in July 2007. But industry argues the standards are unrealistic. It says if units have to treat waste to such levels--so it is reusable--then there is no need for the pipeline for transporting treated effluents. Industry continues to argue it is mixing sewage with industrial effluents and this dilutes and gets rid of pollution. However, in an affidavit to the apex court in March 2006, appcb categorically said dilution was not a permanent solution. "We don't want cetps to damage the stp and the river," says Tiwari. The court gave the cetps 18 months to meet standards in July 2007 (see table Control countdown).

Tiwari is elated. "This is the first time cetp inlet standards have been made so stringent," he says. The question now is how these standards will be met what technologies will be used and at what cost. Whatever is done to upgrade treatment plants, regulators will have to keep in mind that new technologies will have to deal with the problem of antibiotics, especially since there are no standards for them.