Experimental Studies on the Assessment of River Water Quality: A Case Study on Noyyal River Tirupur

Abstract

Tirupur is the most popular textile industrial area, which contains 90% of the knitwear industries in India. By 2005, there were more than 729 bleaching and dyeing units in Tirupur. Now there are 2000 textile manufacturing units producing variety of goods. The textile industries release heavy amount of dye waste which contains bleaching liquids, soda ash, caustic soda, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, sodium peroxide, and so many other toxic materials to river Noyyal. The wastewater is acidic, smells terrible and contains dissolved solids, which increase the biological and chemical oxygen demand in water. With no fresh water available for dilution the groundwater from Coimbatore and Tirupur is no longer suited for irrigation. The dye industries said that the discharge of their industrial effluents to the river Noyyal has stopped. But this study clearly shows the presence of materials that are used in dye production.