CHENNAI: Even as the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board has identified Thiruneermalai lake as an additional water source for the city, the Madras Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) near Tambaram seems to be letting out untreated industrial effluents into the lake.
Locals allege that the water quality has slowly deteriorated ever since the special economic zone was established in 1984 and has reached a point where it is unfit for even domestic use.“We used to scoop water with our hands and quench our thirst after long cricket games,” said Udaya Kumar, a resident reminiscing about the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“As the flow of effluents and sewage increased, people began using it for domestic purposes, but now even that has stopped,” he said, claiming multiple petitions to the administration and local civic bodies have gone unheard.
MEPZ has two sewage/effluent treatment plants with a combined operational capacity of 1.5 MLD. While the .5 MLD plant has been installed by a private company, the 1 MLD plant is operated by MEPZ and is used to treat sewage/effluents of the other companies.
Officials at MEPZ told Express that a 10-month renovation of the 1 MLD plant had halted operations and resulted in seepage of untreated effluent into the lake and that the plant has been completely operational for the last two months.
“The renovation forced us to store the untreated effluents in two small ponds within the compound but that is being treated along with the effluents/ sewage generated presently,” said a consultant overseeing the renovation of the treatment plant, claiming a section of sewage from nearby localities also flows through the MEPZ rainwater drains.
However, when Express visited the site on Thursday and Monday, it found a steady flow of untreated effluent/sewage from one of the storage ponds seeping into the rainwater system which empties into the lake.
An official from the state pollution control board said regular inspections are conducted to ensure that effluents are properly treated and contained and steps would be taken to ensure there is no seepage of raw effluents into the lake.MK Shanmuga Sundaram, development commissioner of MEPZ-SEZ was not available for comment.