The two reverse osmosis (RO) plants in the leather cluster of Ambur and Vaniyambadi, around 200 km from Chennai, will become operational in June.
These plants, part of the common effluent treatment plant, have been set up at a cost of around Rs 70 crore with the centre and stakeholders sharing the financial burden equally, said Z Nizamuddin, manager-technical, Ambur Tannery Effluent Treatment Company Ltd, a special purpose vehicle formed to execute the project.
The Ambur plant has a capacity of 2,400 litres a day. Currently 57 factories, mostly small and medium enterprises in the radius of 5 km, are connected through pipelines in the town.
He said the new system would prevent additional utilisation of eight million litres of water a day in Ambur alone. The units in this town currently consume 12 million litres every day. It would also improve the quality of leather since purified water would be used.
The two units would spend around Rs 8 lakh a month on maintaining the plant, he added. The membranes for the RO plants are being imported from the United States and Holland.
The Industrial Infrastructure Upgradation Scheme (IIUS) of the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry came in handy for the tanneries, which were under pressure from the Supreme Court following complaints about effluent discharge into the Palar river basin and to nearby farms.
