Ludhiana: The effluent treatment plants (ETPs) built to manage wastewater at Ludhiana’s Haibowal and Tajpur Road dairy complexes have stopped functioning properly, triggering a public dispute between dairy owners and municipal officials. The operational failure continues despite the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) slapping a ₹4.09 crore environmental penalty on the facilities.Part of the larger ₹650-crore Buddha Dariya rejuvenation project launched in 2021, the ETPs have a daily treating capacity of 3.75 million liters per day (MLD) at Haibowal and 2.25 MLD at Tajpur Road. The plants were initially put on hold to shift the dairies outside city limits, but the municipal corporation (MC) eventually built them after failing to find alternative land.Local dairy farmers argue that the plants lack the necessary processing capacity for future expansion and need immediate structural upgrades.The chairman of the Haibowal dairy complex, Paramjit Singh Bobby, said, “The ETPs are defunct and need upgrades, only then these will take the load properly otherwise the water will get accumulated in the streets or inside the dairy units.” Tajpur Road dairy farmers similarly staged a protest over the issue outside the MC Zone D office in Sarabha Nagar.Conversely, civic officials state the capacities were accurately designed based on local livestock numbers. They blame the malfunction on dairy units using excessive water and illegally washing raw cow dung into the sewers, which chokes and damages the plant machinery.The PPCB calculated the ₹4.09 crore environmental compensation fine to cover violations spanning January 2021 to November 2024. Fine calculations for the subsequent period remain underway.An anonymous senior official from the civic body stated, “Unless cow dung will come along with waste water to ETPs these will not function properly.” He noted that the civic body has increased its dedicated cow dung lifting services and explicitly instructed dairy owners to stop dumping solid animal waste into the municipal sewer lines to resolve the crisis.
