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India's journey towards cleaner waters has been a complex and often contradictory affair. While it strives to meet its environmental goals, the implementation of sewage treatment standards has been fraught with challenges. The recent directives from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) have created a ripple effect, leading to a clash between central and state authorities over the interpretation and enforcement of discharge regulations.
Since the direction of NGT to revise Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) standards, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEF&CC) has moved to the Supreme Court, and the matter is under consideration by the latter. No final orders have been passed by the court yet. In the meantime, MOEF&CC has not modified its earlier notification dated 2017, and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) website continues to mention the STP discharge standards as mentioned in the 2017 notification.
Meanwhile, various State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) have notified the standards as mentioned by NGT. Some SPCBs have used their power to lay down standards, quoting the Water Pollution Control Act and the directive of the CPCB dated 2015. However, these SPCBs fail to mention that there are no rules under the Water Pollution Act (WPA) to notify standards, and parliament has already vested the power to fix standards with the central government by the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) 1986. It is to be noted that the EPA gives the SPCB the power to make the standards more stringent for specific locations and industries based on written justification.
However, most of these SPCBs have issued blanket notifications for the entire state without providing any scientific rationale. It may be noted that neither the draft notification of CPCB nor MOEF&CC ever mentioned effluent standards for phosphates. The NGT order also laid down phosphate limits only for inland ponds and lakes and not for rivers. Yet, the phosphate standards are also being pushed into government STP tenders for rivers for some unknown reasons.
Since the NGT order, most of the government tenders that have come out in recent years require the tendered STP to meet NGT norms. NGT directives to MOEF&CC are being enforced in the country even when there is no notification from MOEF&CC on this. This approach is significantly increasing the costs of the STP and its operation and maintenance (O&M). It is worth pondering why some government authorities are pushing for NGT standards in the absence of any government notification. Here are a few possible explanations for them.
Firstly, NGT has been imposing penalties against a few state governments that have not taken adequate steps to tackle solid and liquid waste pollution. Sometimes, the fines imposed by NGT run into hundreds of crores. This may have created a sense of fear among the government officials. However, it may be mentioned that while NGT is well within its right to punish the erring state government as per the NGT act, it has no such express power as to fix discharge standards as per the EPA act.
The second reason for this aggressive push is not so benign. It may be worthwhile to revisit the changing tender modalities within the country regarding the setting up of the sewage systems and their maintenance. In the last few years, the government has adopted Design Build Operate Transfer (DBOT) and Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) modalities, wherein the operators are awarded a bulk tender for construction and maintenance and the period of maintenance is fixed at a minimum of 5 to 15 years.
As tertiary treatment significantly increases capital expenditure and operational expenditure, these standards ensure a huge commitment of public resources for contractors winning these bids. It may be argued that the contractor is selected through an open tender; however, as noted by the NGT expert committee, the price discovery by tender method has not been foolproof in India. The huge, inflated costs of STP certainly favour a class of contractors, a few bureaucrats, and other decision-makers who favour large-ticket items. If NGT reports are recommended fully, it will ensure that billions of dollars flow to a small set of private contractors.
The aggressive push by SPCB to implement strict effluent norms may also need to be revisited. Various state governments in recent years have started to mandate apartments, commercial institutions, and small townships to make provisions for STP, and hence, the monitoring space for the SPCB has also increased. The laws give power to SPCB to take strong action against the violators, and hence, if the standards are very strict and difficult to meet, the scope for rent seeking also increases significantly.
India has a long way to go to ensure even the most basic standards of safely managed sanitation for its large population. More than 85% of the wastewater in the country does not meet even secondary effluent standards. Hence, even if some degree of secondary treatment happens for the wastewater entering rivers, the water quality will significantly improve. Of course, ideally, we should treat our wastewater to the most pristine standards.
However, the moot question to answer is whether we have the financial capacities as a nation to bear that burden. The United States, despite its economic strength, has not fully adopted tertiary sewage treatment. India, with a population five times larger and with greater wastewater production, faces even more significant hurdles in implementing such a system.
Not all water bodies in India are sources of drinking water, allowing for the implementation of varying standards, as seen in Singapore. The CPCB, working with SPCBs, has designated water bodies and marine outfalls based on their intended uses. This classification can inform the appropriate level of wastewater treatment for each water body. Stricter discharge standards can be justified based on dilution capacity and the ecological sensitivity of the location. The EPA 1986 empowers SPCBs to enforce stricter norms if supported by a written justification.
To prevent resource wastage, the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO) should come up with price advisories for the entire life cycle of STPs. Public funding should be the sole source of financing for these projects. The purpose of the treatment must also be ascertained at the time of approval of the project, and in case, wastewater reuse is cited as a reason for stricter treatment, the economics and redistribution arrangement of treated water must be ensured before the project is approved.
Urban local bodies financial health is a concern, with India having hundreds of STPs that are not functioning due to high O&M costs and lack of skilled manpower. Creating more without sustainability could waste public money. Wastewater treatment is energy-intensive, accounting for 4% of global energy consumption. European Union Member States aim to ensure renewable energy produced by urban wastewater treatment plants is equivalent to the total annual energy used.
India’s continued adoption of energy-intensive technologies could lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions and huge operating costs against climate goals. The USA and other countries promote climate-friendly nature-based systems, which are easy to maintain, require minimal O&M costs and require negligible electricity, and have even relaxed discharge standards due to their suitability.
The main purpose of standards is to safeguard the health of river and water bodies, with strict discharge standards based on specific conditions and usage. India faces challenges in ensuring comprehensive treatment at the lowest possible cost and monitoring the performance of STPs, which require significant public resources. Online monitoring systems are needed for accountability.
The Supreme Court, in its order of Paryavaran Samiti vs. Government of India, mandated the installation of an online, real-time, continuous monitoring system to display emission levels in the public domain within six months of its judgement in 2017. The bench of the then Chief Justice of India, Justice J.S. Kehar, Justice Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, and Justice Mr. Sanjay Kishan Kaul were part of this order, which made the online performance of effluent treatment plants (ETPs) and STPs compulsory.
There seems to be minimal enforcement of this Supreme Court order, which can significantly improve the health of water bodies at a very low cost, while on the other hand, expensive solutions that do not have commensurate benefits are being pushed at the cost of public exchequer.
Harsh Vardhan is the Chief Executive Officer of CDD India.
This is the fifth of a five-part series of articles on ‘Wastewater management and its evolution’. Please find the first, second, third and fourth articles from the series below: