The Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) has in principle agreed to pump in the entire project cost required for the commissioning of Andhra Pradesh's most prestigious industrial effluent treatment programme.

The IDBI is understood to have expressed its willingness to sanction Rs 16 crore to a consortium which has to take care of the project. The consortium, which is yet to be formed, will have all the pharmaceutical industries that are related to the present (both functional as well as non-functional) common effluent treatment plants, as its members.

Sources informed that the modalities of the project would be worked out in the coming months.

The project, with an estimated cost of Rs 18 crore, would see the construction of an 18 km pipeline linking all the major chemical industrial zones in the Medak district of Andhra Pradesh. These pipelines are to carry the toxic liquid wastes discharged from the industrial units through multiple level processes for reducing the TDS concentration to the sewage level.

The AP drug industry would be the real beneficiary of the project as 90 percent of the State's pharmaceutical units, which constitutes of the major pollutants, are situated here.

The project, conceived a couple of years back could not take off, as there was nobody to volunteer for funding the project. The State Government had even created history by going on record that it doesn't have any funds to spend for the purpose. The drug industry was also reluctant to take the plunge as it felt it has already burned its fingers by initiating the formation of the common effluent treatment plants, which did not erve much purpose.

The recent industry-government discussions had also ended without arriving at any concrete suggestions as both the sides insisted that the latter was responsible for setting up the essential infrastructure.

As per the plan, all the effluents will first go to the CETP at Patancheru, then directed to a sewage treatment plant at Amberpet, and finally discharged into Moosi river. The main advantage here is that itwould ensure that the effluents are not discharged into Nakkalakunta river, the banks of which are thickly cultivated. Instead it will be directed into a distant, practically dead river. Hundreds of drugmanufacturing units, functioning within Pattancheru, Bollaram and Pashamylaram industrial zones are to be benifited from the project.