The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has asked those running the Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) at Karaipudur here to utilise all the equipment installed for achieving zero liquid discharge (ZLD) norms at appropriate cycles or face closure.

Board District Environmental Engineer R. Kannan told The Hindu that instructions were given to the effluent plant owners after it was noticed during one of the recent inspections that treated effluents were yet to reach the evaporator and Reverse Osmosis (RO) appliances even though it had been lying in the storage tank.

Taking a worthwhile step forward, the recently-floated Solar Energy Association of Tamil Nadu (SEAT) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a Chinese firm to set up a model 5 MW solar power plant in the hinterlands of Tirupur.

The SEAT was floated by a group of industrialists from Tirupur and its peripheral areas to promote tapping and use of solar energy through a consortium approach in industrial clusters across the State.

Owners reaping profit at the expense of environment

The district administration has come under severe criticism yet again for the inordinate delay in sealing large number of dyeing units caught for illegal operations. Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board sources told The Hindu that over 30 dyeing units, which were caught over the last six months, were yet to be sealed though the Board had given directives to the District Collector many months back.

A report on drought-like situation in Tirupur district by Department of Agriculture, which was accessed by The Hindu , has stated that 92,327 farmers were affected during the current financial year.

On the cropping area, the drought-like situation had taken a toll on 75,879 hectares brought under cultivation of various crops over kharif and rabi seasons during this fiscal till December 31.

Things changing for good on the pollution front; 16 CETPs, covering 420 dyeing units, have obtained TNPCB permission

It is now two years since the Madras High Court delivered a landmark judgment ordering the closure of dyeing and bleaching units in the Tirupur knitwear cluster for polluting the river Noyyal for decades. The order was pronounced solely because the dyeing fraternity did not adhere to the zero liquid discharge (ZLD) norms despite the directions from the Supreme Court and High Court.

The Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) has commenced reassessment of compensation to around 650 farmers in Tirupur district on whose land through which it would be laying underground pipeline to take liquefied natural gas from Kochi to Bangalore.

“This exercise is taken up only with an aim to enhance the compensation scale as many farmers have been expressing that the amounts initially fixed for laying the underground pipeline through their fields was inadequate to offset the cost of crops displaced to facilitate digging of earth,” GAIL officials told The Hindu .

A group of students from Frontline Academy Matriculation Higher Secondary School here has come out with a handy waste-converter model that can turn the poultry farm wastes and meat wastes from slaughter houses into biogas.

L. Pugazharasi, A. Jagadeesshwari, Bharath Kumar, R. Satieesh and S. Chandru, all Class XI students, who developed the gadget using a bag made of strong flexible waterproofed canvas and fitted with inlet and outlet valves, told The Hindu that the project was aimed at creating awareness among poultry farm owners and farmers about generation of biogas from such wastes and thereby, keep the poultry farms and slaughter house premise free of stench.

In an effort to ease the drawing of electricity from main grids, the District Panchayat administration is to set up solar-powered street lights to lit public places in semi-urban and rural areas across 13 blocks in the district at an estimated total outlay of Rs.45.5 lakh.

District panchayat chairman M. Shanmugam told The Hindu that the lights would be set up at places where the people throng in large numbers like bus stations, commercial places, markets and also in areas where the streets were lonely.

Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) has announced a higher compensation to farmers in seven districts of the state on whose land through which it would be laying underground pipeline to take liquefied natural gas from Kochi to Bangalore.

“The revised scale has been fixed as per the directions of the State Government by which each farmer will now be getting a compensation equivalent to 13 per cent of the ‘new guideline value’ of the land utilised for laying pipeline plus an amount to offset the cost of crops displaced, if any, to facilitate digging of earth,” S. Angamuthu, senior manager of GAIL, told The Hindu .

To provide value-addition in farming activities and arrest the falling farm incomes in the district, the Department of Agriculture is set to introduce ‘Integrated Farming System' practices on a commercial basis in the entire 13 blocks.

The integrated system is the concept of judicious mixing of poultry, mushroom cultivation, fisheries, agro-forestry, goat/cow rearing and sericulture along with the main agricultural crop cultivation on a unit area which could help bring prosperity to farming.