Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. This refrain had become a reality for the people of Mithapur till Tata Chemicals found a way out

A reminder of how precious water is can be gauged from a sight not uncommon in some parts of India: a child is lowered to the bottom of a 50- to 60-foot deep well in search of water. The child spends the better part of two hours at the bottom of the well collecting a bucketful of water for the family. And this happens in one of the wettest countries in the world, where the average annual rainfall is about 1,200 mm.

A major portion of India's rainwater flows to the sea, gets frittered away by seepage or evaporates. Just one-tenth of what the heavens offer us is utilised. Making the problem worse is the difficulty of balancing human need with industrial demand. The key to the success of any water management programme lies in the ability to eliminate this competition.

Tata Chemicals' success in implementing a workable water management programme in Mithapur is nothing short of extraordinary. The company's efforts in facing up to the severe drought conditions in the region, which at one time threatened its very existence, bears testimony to the fortitude, faith and innovation of its engineers.

Held hostage
Mithapur was a place held hostage by the vagaries of the weather. Today Tata Chemicals is the largest manufacturer of soda ash in India, but back in the early 1950s an acute shortage of fresh water threatened the very existence of the company.

In 1947, when the Mithapur complex produced only a fraction of the chemicals it does today, operations had to be shut down for as long as 18 months due to a paucity of fresh water. Again, in 1963, soon after the complex was redesigned and expanded, a monsoon failure caused a severe water famine in the region.

It was then that Tata Chemicals took up the challenge of ending Mithapur's water problem once and for all. Company engineers fixed sea water inlets for toilet connections in the town in four weeks. Within a week they installed more than five miles of freshwater pipes from wells to the chemical unit and also to several homes. Then, still in a defiant mood, the company declared a 'lakeless week' for the town and factory, when no water would be drawn from the two lakes in Mithapur.

The fact that 16,000 people and the chemical complex could survive without drawing water from the lakes for a week was as much a morale-booster as a material triumph. By revamping the technology of water usage, consumption of water was reduced from 22 lakh gallons per day to five lakh gallons.

There was pride in the achievement and the humblest of men felt that he had played a part in the survival of the city and of the chemical complex which sustained it. Had they caved in at the time, Mithapur may have never found its feet.

Total independence
An inorganic chemical complex for the production of key chemicals normally requires a large supply of fresh water. Typically, a chemical complex of Mithapur's dimensions requires as much as 3,00,00,000 gallons of fresh water every day. Faced with the chronic problem of freshwater supplies, the company set out to achieve total independence from outside water for its industrial requirements.

The three key methods to achieve this target were substitution of fresh water, its conservation and captive production. Today every molecule of fresh water used in the company's operations originates from the sea. This miracle has been made possible by many innovative and radical water management programmes.

In the first round, the use of fresh water as a coolant in the complex was substituted by seawater, resolving numerous problems like corrosion and scaling of the heat transfer surfaces. The company was perhaps the first in the world to adopt such a method and the change brought down the requirement of fresh water to 99,00,000 gallons per day.

The sea water was treated in a manner that made it technologically and economically possible to substitute large quantities of fresh water with sea water. Tata Chemicals then minimised the use of fresh water and open steam and generated water by steam jet refrigeration. Wherever possible, water from every hot stream was recovered.

To provide highly pure 'make-up' water for high-pressure boilers, which formed part of the captive co-generation steam power systems, the company installed multi-effect evaporators.

Round-the-clock water
The action plan of the chemical complex was extended to the Mithapur township and to Okhamandal. Though the programmes differed from place to place, the purpose behind them was the same— more water for every human being and every cattle-head even in periods of drought, without affecting industrial production.

As the demand for fresh water for industrial use got drastically curtailed, it became possible to provide good quality water to the people of Mithapur on a round-the-clock basis. The region's populace readily took to the conservation of fresh water. In a parallel, and equally effective, action, sewage disposal was extended to the entire township and sea water was made available in almost unlimited quantities.

In overcoming the freshwater crisis, Mithapur got much more and better water than it had ever done in its history, enabling the town to emerge as a cleaner, greener and happier place to live in.

The company extended various other means to eliminate Mithapur's water shortage, from providing water tankers powered by tractors and bullock carts to delivering drinking water to every village that faced a shortage in the sub-division.

'Havadas' (water tanks) were built to store water in 40 villages. The company drilled 55 bore-wells in 34 villages and provided 31 hand-pumps to make villages self-sufficient in drinking water. Public wells in Okhamandal were repaired by the company.

Repeating the dose
The story at Tata Chemicals' fertiliser complex in Babrala was different. The complex is just 7 km from the banks of the Ganges but despite the availability of lots of water, the company, consistent with the policy it followed in Mithapur, took several innovative water conservation measures right at the design stage.

Tata Chemicals has installed many 180-meter-deep tube-wells and adopted low-energy technology to reduce rejection of heat in Babrala's cooling towers. The treated water from the fertiliser complex is used for horticulture and for developing a green belt within the premises.

As a result, the otherwise barren and unproductive land around Babrala, which was earlier unfit for any vegetation, now nurtures thousands of trees. These measures have together reduced the requirement of fresh water by almost 33 per cent when compared to any other fertiliser complex.

Tatachem's success in insulating its operations from the vagaries of the monsoon is indeed an example for others to follow.

*The writer was vice-president (production) at Tata Chemicals when he wrote this article in 1995.