Sewage continues to be diverted to SWD, none fined since 2017

In 2017, an amendment was made to the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act which empowered the Greater Chennai Corporation to levy a penalty of up to Rs 1 lakh to the people who let their sewage into stormwater drains. As 2018 draws to a close, DT Next found that despite the amendment, the civic body has not penalised a single erring building owner.

With hardly any penalty in the offing, the practice of letting sewage water into the stormwater drains has become rampant in Chennai. This, coupled with the lack of adequate sewage treatment plants, the two major waterways — Cooum and Adyar — have literally turned into drains.

Earlier, the government had constituted Chennai River Restoration Trust to restore the rivers, but the poor coordination among departments and lack of awareness among residents have not yielded any positive results. To make the situation worse, the city has only four sewage treatment plants (STP) whose combined capacity much lesser than what the city generates.

The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) has been running STPs at Perungudi, Nesapakkam, Koyambedu and Kodungaiyur with a capacity of 727 million litres per day (MLD). The city, however, generates more than 1,000 MLD of sewage every day and releases more than 400 MLD of it into Cooum and Adyar rivers, a CMWSSB official said.

He added that the CMWSSB is building new STPs in Kodungaiyur and Koyambedu with a capacity of 45 MLD each. “Even though we supply only 650 MLD of water on alternate days, the consumption is much higher as the residents also use water from borewells and tankers,” the official said. Meanwhile, an official from the Public Works Department (PWD) said that the Cooum and Adyar rivers discharge an average of 200 to 400 cusecs of water every day. “As it has not rained recently, it is apparent that it is the sewage that is flowing in the rivers,” he said.

As sewage continues to dominate drains and rivers, residents urge the government to increase the number of STPs and their capacity. M Mohan, a resident of KK Nagar said, “Even though the city has only a few sewage treatment plants, often some of them are out of order. The Metrowater officials should take steps to set up ward level treatment plants so that the sewage water is recycled.” 

S Vikram, a resident of Choolaimedu, said, “In our locality, a few people have let their sewer lines into the stormwater drains (SWD). Due to this, sewage water overflows from the stormwater drains. Recently, when the Chennai Corporation opened the stormwater drain to construct a new drain, it was found to be filled with sewage.”

Although complaints were made against such practises, the civic body has failed to penalise the guilty parties. An official said, “When we find illegal connections, we issue notices to the concerned building owners and give time to rectify it. 

They have to pay the fine only if they fail to remove the illegal connections after we send them a notice. Since most of them tend to make the corrections, we are yet to penalise any of them,” an official said. He, however, did not clarify if all the erring owners mended their drain connections after receiving the notice. 

Meanwhile, the CMWSSB has 266 pumping stations which pumps the sewage into sewage treatment plants. “We sell recycled water to the industries located in Sriperumbudur and Ennore, and release the remaining water into rivers,” the official said. The STPs also treats 700 loads of sewage water collected by tankers from around the areas along ECR, OMR and outskirts every day.

The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) has proposed to set up modular sewage treatment plants along Adyar River under Chennai Rivers Restoration Trust (CRRT) initiative. According to a CMWSSB official, the modular STPs would come up at Nandambakkam, Manapakkam, Mambalam, Saidapet, MGR Nagar, Adyar, Kotturpuram, Guindy, Ekkatuthangal, Samiyarthottam and Jafferkhanpet. “The modular STPs will be comparatively small structures with a capacity to process four lakh litres per day,” an official said. The CMWSSB has invited tenders bidders to design, supply, install and maintain modular STPs.

While lakhs of illegal sewage connections have been letting waste water into the stormwater drains, the Greater Chennai Corporation is yet to take the issue seriously. Despite civic officials’ claim that they have acted against the residents who let sewage into SWDs, the drains — excluding that in posh localities — are still filled with sewage. As the SWDs are directly connected with rivers, this results in polluting the rivers as well.  So far, the Greater Chennai Corporation have identified and removed only 461 illegal connections. 

“In a pilot measure, we inspected more than 35,000 sewage connections last year and found only 461 illegal ones,” a Corporation official said. It was after the inspection that the civic body decided to penalise building owners who connect sewage lines to stormwater drains. When asked about the follow-up actions after the pilot drive in 2017, the official said that a similar drive would soon be conducted to remove the illegal connections. “It’s not just the residents, some Metrowater workers also connect underground sewers to SWDs. This practice must be continued,” the official added.