Electroplating, dyeing industries trade barbs over nullah pollution issue

The city’s dyeing and electroplating industries are at loggerheads over the Buddha Nullah pollution issue.

Bobby Jindal, president of the Punjab Dyers Association, in a communication to the NGT, said the authorities should cut the sewerage connections of the electroplating units like they cut the connections of the dyeing units. The main reason for this was that, despite efforts made by government agencies, the electroplating industry kept on discharging untreated water into the Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), causing the latter to fail due to the presence of heavy metals in the effluents.

There are over 6,000 electroplating units in Ludhiana alone, and the number would be much higher throughout the state. However, only one Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) of 500 KLD was available to treat the discharge of the electroplating industry. “If the authorities concerned conducted a survey, they would discover the industry’s power bills had increased as more machinery had been added. But they continue to show the same amount of discharge as they used to a decade back,” Jindal added.

Jaswinder Singh Thukral, president of the Janta Nagar Industrial Association, which operates the majority of the electroplating units, said these were all baseless allegations against the electroplating industry. “We have hired a service provider, a private company, that collects the waste water from the tanks and transports it to the Focal Point for treatment. After treatment, the water is released into the MC’s STPs. I wish to remind them that the PPCB only issues NOCs to the units that meet all of the requirements for water treatment,” Thukral said.

However, the dyeing industry said there were thousands of electroplating units and that private companies would never be able to collect untreated water from the tanks in bulk on a daily basis. “The concerned agencies should thoroughly investigate this,” Jindal said.