Rajat Banerji | July, 2002

The River Noyyal has expired. There are no good reasons for this. Only bad ones.

	Over 100,000 cubic metres of effluents are drained into Noyyal river each day!

In normal circumstances, a 173 km-long river could be written off as insignificant..

But when such a river is pronounced dead; when farmers refuse to use its water for irrigation: when a scientific paper concludes that water pollution in the basin can damage even human DNA strands, it is time to sit up and find out just what is going on. Especially when a single water-intensive industry in the basin earns the exchequer a sizeable sum annually, while producing 90 per cent of India's cotton knitwear.

For, in the Noyyal basin is the township of Tirupur, the "banian" (vest) city of India. Here, around 3,000 industries are involved in textile processing and employ over 250,000 people. This has created some of the wealthiest textile traders in the land. It has also brought about the death of the Noyyal River. Over 100,000 cubic metres of effluents are let out into it, each day.

Defies logic
Curiously enough, the Noyyal basin could be termed water-scarce. The river, originating in the Vellangiri hills in the Western Ghats, is seasonal. And just how and why a water-intensive industry should emerge in an area where water is scarce simply defies logic. But then, logic usually comes a distant second where big bucks are concerned.

According to the Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Act every industry is required to get consent before discharging effluents. The same act also empowers state governments to exempt any region or area from provisions of the Act. In other words, once exempt, this industry does not have to either bother with effluent discharge standards, nor does it have to apply for any licenses. The state government of Tamil Nadu therefore granted Tirupur this special status, in order to promote the textile industry.

The basin area is 180 km long and 25 km wide, covering a total area of 3,510 sq. km. The Noyyal is a tributary to the river Cauvery. The basin lies in a rainfall deficient zone, being in a rain-shadow area. While the river flows in full bloom during the monsoon months, it is merely a carrier of domestic and industrial wastes from Tirupur.

And what a toxic cocktail it carries! The Water Technology Centre in Tamil Nadu says that Tirupur's textile industry uses bleaching liquids, soda ash, caustic soda, sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, sodium peroxide, hypochlorite and various dyes and chemicals in textile dyeing and bleaching processes. All this leads to the effluents and hence the water that flows in the river, to having a high salinity-sodicity content, which is a threat to crop yields if used for irrigation. Added that is the presence of heavy metals, which adds to the danger posed by the river water.

According to the state Pollution Control Board (PCB) the accumulated pollution loads between 1980-2000 are as follows:

Total Dissolved Substances (TDS)	23.54 lakh tonnes
Chlorides	13.11 lakh tones
Sulphates	1.25 lakh tones
Total Solid Substances (TSS)	0.97 lakh tonnes
Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD)	0.90 lakh tones
Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)	0.29 lakh tones
Oil & Grease	0.01 lakh tonnes

Evidence Abounds
A study, called 'Biological Monitoring of Genotoxic Hazards Related to Textile Dyeing Industries,' by the PSG College of Arts and Science in Coimbatore, notes that many of the dyes used (in this industry) were known only by their trade name. Their chemical nature and biological hazards were not known.

This study showed that tadpoles in Noyyal had significant DNA damage and that fish organs were highly contaminated. Groundwater samples they collected revealed amines, which are capable of inducing DNA strand breaks in humans. Another report from the University of Madras (Chennai) notes that the Noyyal is dead, because of inflow of industrial effluents.

A report by the Linkoping University in Sweden notes that till the mid-90s, "Approximately 90 million litres of water was used and discharged from the dyeing and bleaching industry in Tirupur. Virtually all of this was let out without treatment." While Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETP) have been set up since - treating only a fraction of the 100,000 million litres daily - the damage has been done.

Tirupur has been divided into 11 zones, eight of which have their own, independently run CETP. While some 164 textile processing units which are neither connected to the CETP, not have their own Independent Effluent Treatment plants have been closed after orders from the Madras High Court, a mess of subsidies has curtailed the efficacy of the CETPs. The polluter, instead of paying for the cleanup, has transferred these costs on to the taxpayer. And no one is complaining.

Another report by the Royal Institute of Technology, also in Sweden, noted that the use of hypochlorite in Tirupur's bleaching units, could even have led to the accumulation of organochlorines, a known and potent carcinogen. Years and years of untreated discharge had thus ruined existing surface and ground water in the region. This had also degraded agricultural lands that had utilized Noyyal's water for irrigation.

Ever widening circles
But the irony doesn't end here. Being a water scarce region, Tirupur's textile magnates purchased water from farmers, for their textile plants.

While this was restricted to a 10 km radius in the early years, falling groundwater levels and increased pollution slowly led this water-hunt into ever-increasing and wider concentric circles. Water had to be purchased in a corridor some 45 km around Tirupur. So heavy was the price that the local environment had to pay for the growth of this industry!

This led to a strange situation. At one stage, some farmers stopped farming altogether and became water entrepreneurs: they simply sunk tube wells on their lands and sold this water to the booming textile industry. They charged between 200-260 rupees ($4-$5.30) for a tanker-load of water (12,000 litres of water). That worked as long as the water lasted. Once the water levels made water extraction economically unviable, the honeymoon was over. It was back to subsistence farming, minus the groundwater they could have used over the years.

To help local agrarian communities in the drier months, the Orthapalayam dam had been built downstream of Tirupur, at a cost of Rs 32.88 crores (3.2 billion) in 1992. The logic was that this dam would store monsoon waters, which could be subsequently utilized.

But the pollution levels in this water rose so high, that local agrarian communities refused to use this water. Taking the issue to court has lead to closure of some of the polluting units in the industry. But as the rectification process is painfully slow, the river is still as dead as they can get.

For more reading, visit the following sites :
Western Ghats: edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/life/western.htm
River Cauvery: www.deccan.net/cauvery