Residents relieved as Panthalkudi STP is reactivated after one year
Madurai: The Panthalkudi sewage treatment plant (STP) on the northern bank of the Vaigai river is back in operation after lying idle for more than a year, providing relief to residents concerned about untreated water entering the Vaigai river ahead of the monsoon.
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The two-million-litre-per-day (MLD) facility, built at a cost of 3 crore in 2021, was dismantled a year ago when work on the 1.3km main arm of the Goripalayam flyover sliced through its site. With the flyover's deck-slab work now underway, Madurai corporation has reconstructed the plant a few metres downstream on land identified in consultation with the state highways (SH) department, which bore the relocation cost of roughly 1 crore.
The restart comes barely a week after chief minister M K Stalin inspected the heavily silted Panthalkudi channel during his city visit. Civic officials hope the revived STP will prevent raw sewage from flowing directly into the Vaigai, especially when lakhs of devotees converge on the riverbank for Chithirai festivals.
A senior corporation official said the plant was commissioned last week after trial runs showed "satisfactory treatment efficiency."
"We re-laid the inlet mains, repaired the clarifier, and installed new disinfection lamps. All parameters are within permissible limits," the official told TOI.
Civic activists, however, have criticised the relocation as a symptom of poor planning. "How could the corporation miss the flyover alignment when it set up an STP just three years ago? Now we're spending another 1 crore—public money wasted," said M Rajan, president of Vaigai Nathi Makkal Iyakkam.
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Calling the present capacity "woefully inadequate," he pointed out that roughly 8 MLD of sewage flows through the channel on peak days. "At the very least, they should have doubled the capacity while shifting the plant," he argued, adding that the facility remained shut throughout the recent Chithirai festival, when demand is highest.
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