37 Water Sources in 25 Tamil Nadu Villages Unfit to Drink: Inside the SIPCOT Perundurai Crisis
Water from 37 sources spread across 25 villages around the SIPCOT Industrial Growth Centre at Perundurai in Erode district, Tamil Nadu, has been found unfit for drinking. The finding, recorded by the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage (TWAD) Board last year, has renewed attention on how industrial activity in one of the State's largest estates has affected the groundwater that surrounding villages depend on.
What the estate is
The SIPCOT Industrial Growth Centre was established at Perundurai in 1991 on about 2,700 acres. It has since grown into a major industrial cluster with more than 250 industries, of which 52 are textile dyeing and processing units. Of these 52 units, 43 run individual Effluent Treatment Plants (ETPs), while nine are connected to a Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP). The estate also has a longer association with tannery operations: in 2001, 23 tannery units that had been operating along the Cauvery and the Kalingarayan Canal in Erode were shifted to SIPCOT.
Why groundwater is at the centre of the concern
Textile dyeing and processing are water-intensive activities. Their effluents typically carry residual dyes, salts and dissolved solids. Tannery waste adds its own set of pollutants, including chromium and sulphides. Where treatment is incomplete, or where effluent channels and storage ponds leak, these substances can percolate through soil into shallow aquifers. Contamination of groundwater is difficult to reverse: unlike a river, an aquifer cannot be flushed clean quickly, and remediation is slow, expensive and sometimes not fully achievable. Villages in the area use groundwater for drinking and for irrigation, which makes the TWAD Board's finding significant beyond the households directly affected.
What is being done
A ₹136.76-crore CETP is under construction to treat contaminated seepage water and resupply it to industries. The project addresses one part of the problem: it intercepts polluted seepage and returns treated water to industrial use, which reduces the volume of fresh water the estate draws. It is not, by design, a drinking-water supply scheme for the villages, nor does it clean the aquifer itself. The full set of parameters tested by the TWAD Board, the specific contaminants identified and the depth and spread of the contamination plume are details that determine how serious the long-term impact is — and those details matter to any remedy that follows.
The gap that remains
The State government and SIPCOT have not yet framed what officials describe as a sustainable and long-term solution. Several questions are still open. Will pollution be stopped at source, so that the seepage is not replenished? Will the affected villages receive an alternative, reliable supply of drinking water in the meantime? Who bears the cost of remediation, and on what timeline? Will monitoring data from the estate's treatment systems and from village wells be published, so that residents and independent researchers can track whether conditions improve or worsen?
The wider context
Perundurai is not an unusual case in Indian industrial policy. Industrial estates have historically been located near rivers and canals for water access and waste disposal, and clusters of dyeing, tanning and chemical units have repeatedly raised the same question: how much pollution is being passed on to people who did not choose to live beside it. The constitutional position is settled in principle. The Supreme Court has held that the right to clean drinking water is part of the right to life under Article 21, and it has repeatedly affirmed the 'polluter pays' principle. Environmental law places the primary duty of compliance on industry and the duty of enforcement on regulators.
What to watch
Erode is a major textile centre, and the estate provides employment and revenue that the region depends on. The dispute is not whether industry should exist, but whether its environmental costs are being measured, disclosed and paid for. The next milestones are the completion and functioning of the CETP, the publication of water quality data from the 37 affected sources, and a clear plan — with dates and responsibility — for restoring or replacing the water that 25 villages can no longer safely drink.
