Treatment plant or no power, top court tells polluting units

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 22

Concerned over untreated domestic and industrial sewage flowing into rivers and other water bodies, the Supreme Court today ordered disconnection of electricity supply to polluting industries if these failed to set up effluent treatment plants (ETPs) in three months.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar directed state pollution control boards to issue notices to industrial units by a common advertisement, asking them to make ETPs operational. Under the law, an operational ETP is a condition precedent to the start of an industrial unit.

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“Those who have not made ETPs functional shall be restrained from further industrial activity,” the Bench said.

It directed power distribution companies to disconnect electricity supply as soon as they received a representation from the pollution board. Disabled units can resume activity after getting appropriate consent from the board.

The Bench also asked local bodies and state governments to put in place centralised ETPs in industrial areas. It asked them to raise funds for repairing dysfunctional centralised ETPs after it was pointed out that most of the existing ones were non-functional due to lack of funds.

The directions came on a petition highlighting increasing pollution levels of water bodies and underground water in Gujarat. The top court had expanded the scope and ambit of the PIL filed four years ago.

Noting that an important responsibility had been vested in municipalities under the Constitution, the Bench said they could not shy away from it. The court allowed them to evolve norms to recover funds by levying user charges on domestic and industrial consumers.

“You can charge a minimal amount of money every month from the users. Raise money and repair the centralised ETPs,” it added.

In case the norms were not framed, the state will have to share the financial burden to run the non-functional centralised effluent treatment plants.

The Bench fixed a three-year deadline for completing the construction of new centralised effluent treatment plants in areas where it was not there at all. It said states must acquire additional land for setting up zero-liquid discharge plants and asked state pollution control boards to put in place a mechanism in six months for online real-time monitoring system to display effluent levels in water bodies.

The court made state urban development secretaries and secretaries of local bodies in question responsible for the implementation of its orders. 

It directed state pollution control boards to ensure that the effluent treatment plants remained functional.