Noida to do a Singapore, turn waste water fit for drinking

The Noida authority said it will emulate the example of Singapore and upgrade the waste water treatment technology in order to purify water.

The Noida authority is embarking on an ambitious project to treat waste water and make it fit for drinking. The authority said it will emulate the example of Singapore and upgrade the waste water treatment technology in order to purify the water.

Water treated by the new technique will be pollution-free and will be fit for consumption. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

“We have taken in-principle approval of Noida chief executive officer (CEO) Rama Raman to work on this important project,” said Samakant Shrivastav, project engineer, Noida authority.

“We want to treat waste water and make it so clean that it can be used for drinking purposes, as it happens in Singapore,” Shrivastav said about the move.

The authority plans to use a tertiary treatment method as opposed to the sequential batch reactor (SBR) technology that is in use since 2012.

The objective of using tertiary treatment method — a cleaning process that improves quality of treated waste water — is to remove lifeless pollutants that could be harmful to health and also pollute groundwater.

In the first phase of the plan, the authority plans to supply better quality treated water to Noida’s 17 industrial areas and realtors.

At present, water requirement for Noida is 219 million litres per day (MLD).

Around 50-60 per cent of the water need is met by the Ganga water supply from the Upper Ganga Canal.

For the rest, Noida depends on its groundwater, which is depleting at an alarming rate across the city.

With tertiary treatment, the biological oxygen demand (BOD), one of the most common measures of pollutant organic material in water levels, will be achieved up to 3mg/l, officials said.

According to experts, water is said to be fit for consumption if it has BOD level below 10 mg/l.

“Initially, the authority will clean only 50-55 MLD of 231 MLD waste water through tertiary treatment. After the treatment, waste water will not pose any problems even if consumed by mistake,” Shrivastav said.

“It will not pollute groundwater either,” he said.

In the second phase, the authority will treat water to make it fit for drinking, a plan to be implemented in 20-30 years time.

The authority will rope in the Indian Institute of technology (IIT) in Roorkee or Delhi by January 31, 2016 to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) for the project.