Wastewater Treatment in India

Abstract

Water, food and energy securities are emerging as increasingly important and vital issues for India and the world. Most of the river basins in India and elsewhere are closing or closed and experiencing moderate to severe water shortages, brought on by the simultaneous effects of agricultural growth, industrialization and urbanization. Current and future fresh water demand could be met by enhancing water use efficiency and demand management. Thus, wastewater/low quality water is emerging as potential source for demand management after essential treatment. An estimated 38354 million litres per day (MLD) sewage is generated in major cities of India, but the sewage treatment capacity is only of 11786 MLD. Similarly, only 60% of industrial waste water, mostly large scale industries, is treated. Performance of state owned sewage treatment plants, for treating municipal waste water, and common effluent treatment plants, for treating effluent from small scale industries, is also not complying with prescribed standards. Thus, effluent from the treatment plants, often, not suitable for household purpose and reuse of the waste water is mostly restricted to agricultural and industrial purposes.