India’s sewage treatment plants
- September 23, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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India’s sewage treatment plants
Subject – Environment
Context – India’s sewage treatment plants treat only a third of the sewage generated daily: CPCB
Concept –
- Sewage treatment plants (STPs) in India are able to treat a little more than a third of the sewage generated per day, according to the latest report of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
- The released recently CPCB report has been compiled on the basis of information received from the state pollution control boards about STPs.
Skewed distribution
- Five states and Union Territories (UT) — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Karnataka — account for 60 per cent of the total installed treatment capacity of the country.
- These, along with five other states and UTs — Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan — alone constitute 86 per cent of the total installed capacity.
- Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland have not installed sewage treatment plants.
- There are states like Bihar which do have a small installed capacity of STPs. But on the operational front, they score a zero.
- Chandigarh ranks first in terms of total sewage generated to what is actually treated.
- Other states and UTs doing well in terms of proportion of sewage waste actually treated to generated ratio include Delhi (72 per cent), Punjab (72 per cent), Haryana (71 per cent), Gujarat (54 per cent) and Maharashtra (47 per cent).
Reuse of sewage
- Treated sewage water can be reused for horticulture, irrigation, washing activities (road, vehicles and trains), fire-fighting, industrial cooling, toilet flushing and gardening, according to the report of the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation.
- The proportion of the reuse of treated sewage is maximum in Haryana (80 per cent) followed by Puducherry (55 per cent), Delhi (50 per cent), Chandigarh (35 per cent), Tamil Nadu (25 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (20 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (5 per cent).
- The Delhi government has set a target to increase their reuse to 60 per cent from 12.5 per cent.