The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Tirupur effluents discharge: PAC moots Rs. 800-cr. scheme

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Thursday, Nov 02, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Tirupur effluents discharge: PAC moots Rs. 800-cr. scheme

G. Satyamurty

Project may be funded by Centre with contributions by State, Tirupur entrepreneurs

Coimbatore: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly proposes to recommend a Rs. 800 cr scheme to dispose treated effluents from Tirupur into the sea, its chairman C. Gnanasekaran told a press conference here on Wednesday.

The committee has visited various places in the district including Tirupur since Monday. He admitted that the Orathupalayam Dam that came up in 1992 for storing irrigation water had turned out to be a reservoir for effluents from Tirupur and the Kalingarayan Canal.

The entire agricultural land around the reservoir has been affected and water in the surrounding wells is not suitable for drinking. A number of patients in the Kanchipuram Cancer Institute were from this region. "The people of this region even complain of infertility due to this water and they suffer from various dermatological problems as well."

Mr. Gnanasekaran said this was despite a number of units installing the "reverse osmosis" facility to treat effluents. While the lakhs of workers depend on the 5,000 industrial units in Tirupur and more than 550 units in Erode, farmers and people in the surrounding regions should also be able to live here.

He is of the opinion that only a major scheme that could discharge the treated effluents into the sea somewhere near Nagapattinam would prove to be a permanent solution.

This could be a project funded by the Centre with contributions from the State and from Tirupur entrepreneurs.

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