Two years is a long time to wait for a sewage treatment plant, especially if you're a farmer watching your groundwater get worse every season. That's roughly the story unfolding along Coimbatore's Noyyal River, where a sewage treatment project cleared by the National River Conservation Directorate back in 2024 is still stuck at the Detailed Project Report stage, while nine town panchayats along the river continue discharging untreated sewage into it.
A River That's Supposed to Be Getting Cleaner, Not Worse
The Noyyal isn't a minor stream; it runs through a water system that includes 17 dams and 25 ponds across Coimbatore district. The proposed project was designed to collect and treat sewage from the nine local bodies along its course before that sewage ever reaches the river, which would, in theory, also make more treated water available for irrigation reuse instead of raw discharge contaminating the aquifer underneath. Under the approved funding arrangement, the Centre was to cover 60 percent of project costs, with the Tamil Nadu government picking up the remaining 40 percent.
Nearly two years on, that arrangement hasn't translated into pipes in the ground. Farmer and local association member Rajan Arunachalam put it plainly: there's been virtually no progress since the initial announcement, and untreated wastewater keeps flowing in, polluting groundwater and making farming along the Noyyal increasingly difficult.
Where Things Actually Stand
Coimbatore District Collector Pavankumar G. Giriyappanavar has said the project is currently at the DPR stage and will move forward once the necessary procedures are completed, and that a proposal has also been forwarded to extend the project to cover additional local bodies along the Noyyal. That's a reasonable-sounding bureaucratic answer, but it's cold comfort for farmers who've been hearing some version of "it's in process" for two years while their water keeps getting worse.
Why This Isn't Just a Coimbatore Problem
What's happening on the Noyyal is a pretty clean illustration of a gap that shows up across Indian river-rejuvenation projects generally: environmental clearance is often the easy part, while the DPR-to-construction pipeline is where projects go to stall. A recent Parliamentary Standing Committee review flagged exactly this kind of slow-moving execution as a national pattern under schemes like AMRUT 2.0, not something unique to Tamil Nadu.
For farmers along rivers like the Noyyal, the practical fix that would actually change their day-to-day reality isn't another clearance letter, it's a functioning sewage treatment plant that reliably keeps raw discharge out of the water they irrigate with, paired with a real timeline they can hold someone to.
Key Highlights
- A Noyyal River sewage treatment project, cleared by the National River Conservation Directorate in 2024, remains stuck at the DPR stage.
- Nine town panchayats along the Noyyal continue discharging untreated sewage into the river.
- Farmers report worsening groundwater contamination, making agriculture harder along the river's course.
- The approved funding split is 60% Centre, 40% Tamil Nadu state government.
- The Collector has confirmed the project will proceed once DPR-related procedures are completed, with a proposal to extend coverage to more local bodies.
Sources & Further Reading
This article is based on reporting from SocialNews.XYZ and NewKerala, both published August 2026.
