KARAIKAL: Work on Karaikal’s first sewage water treatment plant (STP) undertaken at a cost of about Rs 40 crore is in progress to be completed by this year itself, according to sources.
The STP with a capacity to treat 11 million litres per day (MLD) is being set up over a land parcel of 2.5 acres in Puthuthurai after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) noted that sewage from Karaikal town is polluting the Arasalar, Noolar and Vanjiyar rivers. It directed the Karaikal administration and the Puducherry Public Works Department (PWD) to come with an action plan to tackle the issue.
Accordingly, work on the plant being set up at a cost of Rs 33 crore commenced in December. A Gujarat-based company, which is setting up the plant, will also collaborate in its maintenance for the first two years. The maintenance is expected to cost about Rs 7 crore.
About Rs 22 crore of the total funding is from the Union government under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme while the Puducherry PWD is contributing the rest. A PWD official on the project said,
"We have identified around 20 points where sewage from Karaikal town is discharged into the rivers. The sewage would be directly pumped from those points, directed through underground PVC pipelines to Puthuthurai, and would be treated using Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) technology at the plant." SBR technology implies a method where sewage is treated in batches.
The undesirable particles are separated from the sludge in each batch. "The technology will assure that the emissions from the plant are low. People around the plant will not be affected," Collector K Kulothungan said. The treated water is then planned to be directed towards the Arasalar from which it would be distributed for agricultural purposes through irrigation channels.
"Since the discharge outlet is connected to a point downstream of the drinking water pumping station in the river, any chance of water pollution can be prevented," the PWD official added.