Untreated Industrial Effluent: How to Complain and Get Action

To get action on untreated effluent, send a written complaint to the regional office of your State Pollution Control Board that names the unit, pinpoints where and when the discharge happens, attaches dated photos, and asks for three specific things: an inspection, samples at named points, and action under section 33A of the Water Act. Copy the District Magistrate and the CPCB. Keep the diary number. Most complaints fail not because the law is weak but because they are vague, sent to the wrong office, or never followed up.

This guide is about the complaint itself: how to spot untreated effluent, what to record, how to word the letter, where to send it, what the board does once it arrives, and how to push when it goes nowhere. It is written for residents, farmers and RWA members, and you can follow most of it without a lawyer.

For the wider picture of remedies, including compensation and what a factory can do in reply, see our page on industrial effluent and water pollution remedies.

The essentials

How do I complain about a factory releasing untreated effluent?

Put it in writing to the State Pollution Control Board's regional office for your district. In Delhi that is the DPCC; in Uttar Pradesh the UPPCB; in Haryana the HSPCB. Many boards accept complaints by email or through an online complaint system, and some regional offices still prefer a letter delivered by hand. Use whichever gives you a dated acknowledgment, and if you can, do both.

The complaint should do four jobs. Identify the unit by name, address and product. Describe the discharge: where it leaves the premises, what it looks and smells like, where it goes, and when. Attach evidence: dated photos and a short log. And ask for specific action: inspect the unit and its effluent treatment plant, take samples at the final outlet and in the drain upstream and downstream, and take action under section 33A of the Water Act if the discharge is confirmed.

Then copy the District Magistrate or SDM, the CPCB, and whichever local body owns the drain or channel. A complaint that sits only with the regional office can sit there for a long time. Copies to other authorities create a record that more than one office knew.

How can I tell the effluent is untreated?

You cannot be sure by eye, but there are strong signs. Treated effluent is usually clear or slightly tinted, with little smell. Untreated effluent from a dyeing unit is often deep blue, red or black; from a paper or food unit it is brown and frothy; from a chemical or pharmaceutical unit it may be clear but smell sharply of solvents. Thick foam that persists, an oily film, dead fish, and a drain that changes colour at certain hours are all signs that something is going in without treatment.

Timing is the other giveaway. A unit whose treatment plant cannot cope often lets the backlog out when it thinks nobody is watching: late at night, early morning, on Sundays and holidays, and during the first heavy rain, when the drain is already muddy. If the colour of the drain changes when the factory's shift changes, that is worth writing down.

Watch also for things that are not pipes. A tanker that leaves the unit full and comes back empty in half an hour has not gone to a treatment facility. A pit inside the boundary that never seems to fill may be a soak pit. A borewell in a unit that already has a water connection deserves a question. And dark sludge heaped on open land is often ETP sludge, which may be hazardous waste.

What to record before you complain

Find out what the unit is allowed to discharge

Before or along with your complaint, file an RTI with the State Board asking for the unit's consent to establish and consent to operate, the conditions attached, the last two inspection reports, and any analysis reports of its effluent. The board must reply within 30 days. The answer changes the complaint in useful ways.

If the unit has no valid consent to operate, your complaint becomes much simpler: it is running and discharging without permission, and the board should act on that alone. If the consent says zero liquid discharge, any effluent leaving the premises is a breach, whatever its quality. If the consent allows discharge into a sewer or a CETP, effluent in a stormwater drain or field is outside the permission. And if the consent allows discharge within standards, the question becomes whether the effluent meets those standards, which is where sampling matters.

Inspection reports are also telling. A report that records the ETP as not running, or the flow meter as broken, on an earlier visit shows a pattern. Our guide on what a non-working ETP means for a factory explains what those entries mean.

What a good complaint letter contains

Keep it to one or two pages. Officials read short complaints; long ones get filed.

• Subject line. Name the unit and the problem: 'Discharge of untreated effluent by [unit name], [address], into [drain or channel]: request for inspection, sampling and action under section 33A of the Water Act.'
• Who you are. Your name, address and why you are affected: you live 200 metres downstream, your field takes water from the channel, your colony's handpumps are nearby.
• What happens. Two or three sentences: where the effluent leaves the unit, what it looks like, where it goes, and the hours you have seen it.
• Since when. The approximate date it began and the dates you have recorded.
• Harm. Smell, skin problems, crop damage, dead fish, unusable water. Stick to what you have seen or can show.
• What you ask. Inspection of the unit and its ETP; samples at the final outlet and in the drain upstream and downstream; checking the consent conditions; action under section 33A including closure and disconnection if a breach is found; and a written reply.
• Annexures. A numbered list of photos, the log, the RTI reply and any test reports.
• Copies. List the offices copied at the end, so each knows the others have it.

From the first letter to action: the steps that work

This sequence keeps the pressure steady without spending money too early.

Do not wait for the RTI reply before complaining. The two can run side by side, and an early complaint dates the start of your effort.

What happens after the board receives the complaint

A complaint is marked to an officer in the regional office, usually an assistant or junior environmental engineer, who is supposed to inspect. A good inspection includes checking whether the ETP is running, reading the flow meters and the ETP's electricity meter, looking at the logbook and chemical consumption, walking the boundary for bypass pipes, and taking samples. Samples go to the board's laboratory, and results take some time.

If the inspection confirms a breach, the board usually issues a show-cause notice under section 33A, giving the unit a short period to reply. After the reply and a hearing, the board may direct closure, order electricity and water disconnected, impose environmental compensation using the CPCB method, or give the unit time to comply with conditions. The unit can appeal a direction to the NGT under section 33B within 30 days.

In practice, many complaints end with a notice and a promise of compliance rather than closure. That is not always a failure: if the discharge stops, the complaint has worked. If it resumes, your next complaint should quote the earlier inspection and notice, because a repeat breach after an assurance to the board is treated much more seriously.

How long to wait before escalating

There are no fixed deadlines for boards to act on complaints, so these are practical guides, not legal limits.

Remember the NGT's limit for an original application: 6 months from when the cause of action first arose, extendable by 60 days for sufficient cause. A discharge that keeps happening usually gives a continuing cause, but do not rely on that to sit back. Our guide on NGT time limits explains how they are counted.

The board is not acting. What are my options?

You have three, and they can be combined. The first is to escalate inside the system: the board's head office, the CPCB, and the District Magistrate, who can deal with a public nuisance under section 152 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. A DM who calls a meeting of the board, the local body and the unit can get faster results than a stack of letters.

The second is a court complaint. Section 49 of the Water Act allows a citizen to complain in court after giving the board at least 60 days' notice of the offence and the intention to complain. The 2024 amendment replaced many Water Act offences with monetary penalties decided by an adjudicating officer, so this route needs a careful look at which provision still carries prosecution.

The third, and usually the most effective, is the NGT. An application showing a clear complaint trail, photos over time and an RTI reply that the board knew and did nothing is the kind the tribunal takes seriously. Our guide on NGT cases against authorities that will not act explains how to frame it, and our NGT filing page covers the procedure.

Why effluent complaints fail

Vagueness kills more complaints than anything else. 'Factories in the area are polluting the water' gives an officer nothing to inspect. 'A pipe from the rear wall of X unit discharges dark blue water into the Y drain between 10 pm and 2 am' does. Name one unit at a time if you can; a complaint against a whole industrial area is better addressed to the board's head office and the CPCB with a request for a survey.

The second reason is no follow-up. Many people send one letter, hear nothing and give up, or switch to social media. Social media can create pressure, but it does not build the written record a tribunal relies on. The third is exaggeration. If you say the water is killing people and there is no medical evidence, the rest of your complaint loses credibility. Describe what you see, and let the samples do the rest.

Last, people sometimes complain only to the police. The police can act on criminal acts such as threats, trespass or illegal dumping from a tanker, and an FIR may be useful there. But the authority that inspects, samples and closes a polluting unit is the pollution control board.

Fear of retaliation, anonymous complaints and group complaints

If you are worried about the factory owner's reaction, a complaint signed by the RWA, the gram panchayat or several residents spreads the risk. Boards do act on anonymous tips, but an anonymous complaint cannot be followed up, cannot be used later in the NGT and is easy to ignore. If there are threats, report them to the police and mention the complaint you made.

Where workers from the unit are your neighbours, they may know when discharge happens but will rarely put it in writing. Their information can guide when you watch and photograph; your own records are what you file. In villages, a resolution of the gram sabha or panchayat is a useful annexure, because it shows the whole community is affected.

In cases where Advocate B.K. Singh has taken effluent complaints to the NGT, the evidence that counted most was usually ordinary: a month of timed photos from the same spot, an RTI reply showing what the unit was permitted, and the board's own inspection report. Elaborate evidence came later, if at all.

Before you send the complaint

Related guides

If the effluent is reaching a river, read how to complain about industrial discharge into a river. If handpumps or wells are affected, see drinking water contaminated by industry. For dyeing units in particular, our guide on textile dyeing unit pollution covers the problems specific to that industry. If you want help drafting the complaint, see our page on pollution complaints.