After studying solar power, the Sabarmati Riverfront Project and CCTV-based city surveillance system in Gujarat, Delhi Government would make a visit to the Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) in the State to check on the hazardous sludge generating units.
The Committee members and officers of Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) along with officials from the Environment Department would visit the CETPs in Gujarat to understand and explore feasibility of implementing practices and systems adopted there to keep check on the hazardous sludge generating units, Environment Secretary Sanjiv Kumar said on Sunday.
Delhi Government has already identified two industrial areas in the national Capital which have maximum concentration of hazardous sludge generating units. The 11 CETPs in these industrial areas shall be converted into Biological Treatment Plants by closing the hazardous waste (ETP sludge) generating units located in these industrial areas. The DPCC will hire a consultant and prepare a roadmap for this said Environment Secretary, Kumar said.
He further informed that in the absence of Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facility (TSDF) in Delhi, CETP societies are storing the hazardous sludge. Now most of the CETPs do not have space for storage of sludge. Units of CETPs (equalisation tank, dosing tanks, tube settlers etc) are filled with sludge.
At present, the CETPs are treating mixed waste water (industrial and domestic) using chemicals whereas numbers of water polluting units are very few in most of the industrial areas and huge quantity of chemical consumption and huge quantity of sludge is being generated, which can be avoided, Kumar explained.