Questions/Answers

Surat Municipal Corporation has developed well established sewerage system to collect domestic waste water from the households of the Surat city. In order to reduce diversion of drinking water for industrial purposes, to contribute towards reducing the dependency on conventional resources of water, to conserve valuable ground water resources for future generation and to facilitate reuse & recycling of wastewater with Guaranteed revenue generation for Surat Municipal Corporation, Surat Municipal Corporation has constructed 40 MLD capacity Tertiary Sewage Treatment Plant to treat secondary treated water from Bamroli Sewage Treatment Plant and to generate & supply Industrial Grade Water for Pandesara Industrial Estate at a capital cost of Rs.85.10 Crores. The plant was completed in February 2014 and is functional since then. This Tertiary sewage treatment plant being the very first of its kind in India at ULB level, Surat Municipal Corporation was again in limelight at the national stage again for its initiative in the new direction of technical excellence. This initiative is useful in water conservation and wastewater recycling and to free up potable water resources for Non Potable purposes and this free up potable water is now being supplied as drinking water to the newly merged area in the Surat city.

Surat-Municipal-Corporation has taken initiative in association with user-industries & State-Government to generate alternate resource of water through recycle of treated sewage through tertiary level treatment. Project has been successfully in operation since last 4 years, which has lead path to Government agency to replicate the same. The Treated-Waste-Water Policy of Government of Gujarat published in May-2018 is in-line with the successful project implemented by Surat-Municipal-Corporation. Government of Gujarat has set goal to reuse the 70% of Sewage by year-2025 & 100% by year-2030. Thus, this successful project has lead path to policy makers, user-industries & local bodies to move ahead.

Initiative of reuse of Treated-Waste-Water reduces the burden on receiving water bodies, where in secondary level treated Wastewater was planned to be discharged, preventing the additional pollution load to that extent has been avoided. Secondly, instead of lifting the fresh water from the available resources, waste-water being treated up to the desired level to reuse the same against the natural water resource, conserves the environment. Overall impact on the climate is by reducing burden on natural resources as well as preventing environment & subsequently climate by this project. Thus it meets SDG in climate action head.

Creation of alternative resource, which in-turn creating assured quality- quantity of water resources, which is basic need of industries to sustain & operate industries in competitive market. Initiative has given confidence to user-industries to operate their industries at desired output. Consequently, creating employment in industries which directly impact on the group of population working with these industries. Particularly, labors associated with these industries. Therefore, initiative giving better livelihood to people associated with these industries & indirectly upgrading the life of their children & dependents. Function of local body is to provide good quality of drinking water to citizen & other basic services for the betterment of citizen. Due to high rate of growth in population and industrial growth creates gap between demand & service provided to citizen. Water-supply-system is the most critical for local bodies & therefore long term planning to cope-up with water demand for citizen as well as for industries is very critical for local government. This initiative which is going to be replicated in next few years will definitely assure potable water to the citizen of city by saving it through supplying alternate water to the industries. The quantity, thus saved will be made available to citizen.

In country like India, with limited resources & willingness to do such kind of project is high-risk by investing financial-resources & getting desired output with committed industrial-users. However, all the risk was been taken into account before initiating this project, therefore Operation-Maintenance of this facility has been outsourced & kept in the scope of the agency who has set-up this facility. To safe guard financial return, long term agreement has been executed with user-industries & proper system has been setup to generate bills regularly & collect the revenue from user-industries. Thus, this is innovative initiative covering all aspects of new technology & financial arrangements.

Before implementation of this project, there was no such project in operation in the country with such huge capacity of 40 MLD at local body level. This project was first of its kind in the country, when it was being inaugurated by the then time Hon’ble Chief-Minister of Gujarat State. After the implementation of this project, many Water-supply & Sewerage boards of the Country, State-Urban development Dept, Urban local bodies, foreign-delegates & many other agencies have visited this plant & appreciated the innovation which is first of its kind & get inspired from this initiative to go ahead for such project in their region.

On successful operation of this project since last 4 years, user-industries have come forward to get more treated water from SMC. SMC has started to setup additional 40 MLD capacity Tertiary-Treated-Wastewater Treatment Plant, in addition to existing 40 MLD TTP, which will make User- Industries to get 80 MLD of Treated waste-water. Industrial setup adjacent to the city has also come forward to get 35 MLD Treated wastewater from Surat-Municipal-Corporation by inspiring from successful implementation of Tertiary Treatment Plant for Pandesara-Industries. Moreover, Government of Gujarat has also framed the policy of Treated Wastewater by taking inspiration from this successful project. Many local bodies & Water-supply & sewerage boards have visited this facility & few have initiated such kind of project.

Project was initially planned to implement on PPP basis but Surat Municipal Corporation decided to take up this project on EPC basis, looking to the long term financial benefits. Initially the capital cost was put by Surat-Municipal-Corporation, which was reimburse by the Government of Gujarat through Swarnim-Jayanti-Mukhya-Mantri-Saheri-Vikas-Yojana-(SJMMSVY). The Operation-Maintenance cost alongwith electricity has been paid by Surat-Municipal-Corporation & it is being recovered from user industries by issuing bills to them based on water being consumed by industries. As operation of this plant is sensitive & critical to maintain the desired output, complete plant has been operate on SCADA system which required skilled manpower on operation.

This initiative has develop a confidence at user industries level, which is getting assured Quality & Quantity of treated waste water, which is basic need of user industries. Getting continuous & assured resources, industries being operated with desired targets & the people associated with these industries are getting their assured jobs. Thus, this initiative balances the social as well as the economic infrastructure of the society. Instead of using natural available resources, generating the additional resources by treating the sewage water & using the same has been decreasing the pollution load on the water bodies, where treated sewage water was instead being discharged. Additionally, generation of water resources also conserve the available water resource, therefore this project is creating a positive impact on the environment.

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An independent consultant has evaluated this project on technical aspects. Particularly, the level of treatment, the process flow of treatment technology, the desired output & the problem associated to get the desired output & how this project can be replicated at other places. Independent Consultant has visited the site & evaluated the performance parameters of the plant. The copy of the performance report is annexed.

The most important parameter was to get the desired quality of treated water in accordance with the demand of user industries. The most common indicator, which was evaluated was the performance of plant as a whole & performance of UF & RO, in particular.

Independent Consultant suggested few points for continuous operation to get desired level of treatment including adding additional chemicals as well as the rescheduling of various cleaning cycles. This project was initiated for the first time & was new concept at local body level and therefore, the adoption of suggestions made by the consultant were very much useful to improve the plant performance.

Mainly three stake-holders are involved in this project, 1.Local-body, 2.User-Industries, 3.Executing-agency. The role and responsibility of three were very well defined as under. Role of Surat-Municipal-Corporation: Conceptualization of project, Preparation of detailed design, invitation of tender and selection of operating agency, Project funding, Land allocation, Project execution, Payment of electricity bill. Role of User-Industries: End consumer, Assurance to purchase committed quantity for well defined time duration, Acceptance of the rate structure as mutually agreed, Agreed to price variation corresponding to RBI index, Regular payment to support the system. Role of Executing-agency: Monitoring of inlet and outlet parameters, Construction of plant to meet the desired parameters, Complete Operation & Maintenance of the plant including all major / minor repairs and replacements of spares, Comprehensive treatment responsibility from collection point to disposal point. Over and above stake holder, the overall performance of the plant was evaluated by independent consultant, which was found satisfactory & the certificate of satisfaction from User-industries as well as inspiration of nearby industries is major success of this project.

1.The quality and quantity of sewage reaching to Sewage Treatment Plant should not have much variation/fluctuation, particularly there should not be any discharge of industrial waste in to sewage. 2.Inlet quantity to tertiary should be continues supply and for that the system of buffer tank is required. 3.There should be uninterruptible power supply to the plant for continuous functioning of the plant. 4.The proper treatment of reject water after Tertiary Treatment shall be planned. Outcome of the report from the independent consultant & the experience of Operation & Maintenance operator have been incorporated while replicating this project.