Reliance on Treatment Plants will not solve India’s River Pollution Problem

Centralised treatment plants and involve a lot of construction activities.  Most of our cities along Ganga as well as on other rivers are having areas which are difficult to lay sewer lines, install pumping stations and build other infrastructure.  Our major reliance on treatment plants therefore would not help us much in ending all the pollution woes of our Rivers. 

We Indians have considered our rivers to be holy entities, Ganga being the holiest.  However, the way we have treated our rivers, especially in our urban limits, gives a complete opposite picture from these conventional perceptions.  We are making them dirty to an extent that they are starting to fight back, to throw back pollutants at us.  Take for example the Ganga.  Latest pollution monitoring reports suggest, even bathing in the river could be fatal with the concentration of Faecal Coliform (FC) shooting up to 13 times than permitted limits in many stations.

We have already written in this column that pollution of our rivers has been growing by the years, and our cities are the major culprits in that.  In fact, a comparison of two reports of the Central Pollution Control Board (CBCB) has confirmed that number of polluted stretches of our rivers have doubled just in five years.  While in 2008, a total of 150 river stretches were polluted, that increased to 302 by 2012.

A latest report of 2017 by the Central Water Commission (CWC) that analyses water quality data from 222 of the 429 stations it monitors across major river basins of the country, found out that water quality at 67 locations is beyond the permissible limit.

Out of 67 sites, 14 sites fall in category I that means the river there is severely polluted. 12 sites fall under Category II, meaning the rivers are facing substantial pollution at those stations. This report does not cover Ganga and its tributaries, Brahmaputra and Barak basins.  In Indus basin, CWC says, it does not have adequate water quality monitoring stations to be able to conclude anything substantial.

Ganga: major focus, huge lapses

A latest report for the Ganga, as reported in the Hindustan Times, gives a much scary picture.  This report, that claims to have obtained current statistics from Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), informs that “in Uttar Pradesh, 50% of the 16 stations for which latest FC data is available for 2018, did not meet desired standards. For Bihar, 88% of the stations did not meet standards”.

This despite of the fact that the current government’s major focus has shifted – from all other rivers of the country – to the holiest river of India.

In one of its latest audits, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, found out that there has been serious underspending on the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG).  The government in 2015 had committed an amount of 3 billion USD for a five-year project to clean the 2525 kilometre long river.  An amount of 1.05 billion USD was earmarked for cleaning the Ganga between April 2015 and March 2017.  However, the government could only spend about 260 million of this during this two-year period.

Plans to treat sewer generated from cities has been one of the major interventions to check pollution of our rivers.  However, the pace of projects aimed at this has been very slow.  Data available on this are also not reliable at the moment.  The Minister of Water for State said to the Lok Sabha in March 2017 that under the Namami Gange programme 145 Sewerage Treatment Projects (STPs) had been sanctioned at an estimated cost of 10,730 Crore rupees. Out of these 72 projects are sanctioned for creation of 932.84 million litres per day (MLD) new STP and rehabilitation of 1091.00 MLD of STP and laying/rehabilitation of 4031.41 km sewer network for abatement of pollution in river Ganga and Yamuna.

Only 13 projects had been completed till then which has created 198.13 MLD STP capacity (153.1 MLD for river Ganga and 45 MLD for Yamuna River) and laid 1147.75 km of sewerage network.  Then, the Minister informed, under Ganga Action Plan (GAP-I) and GAP-II, 1098.31 MLD sewage treatment capacity has been created. 261 projects were approved at an estimated cost of 462.04 Crore rupees. GAP-I was completed in 2000 at a total expenditure of 455.73 Crore rupees.  All schemes under GAP-I have been completed, according to him. Under GAP-II, 314 projects were approved at an estimated cost of 591.05 Crore rupees. Total fund released by Government of India was 522.11 Crore rupees.

The data given above do not give a complete picture of the progress in creating sewerage treatment capacity and their actual operation.  However, the very slow progress of the STPs is evident.  While 1098.31 MLD capacity has been built under GAP I & II, the same under Namami Gange has been 153.1 MLD for the Ganga as against a target of 2023.48 MLD.

As of February 2018, as per a report of the Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment reports, “the target was to process around 2769.38 million litre waste per day. However, only 299.13 million litres waste has been processed per day. Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi score a nil on this front. Of the 4,762 km of sewer network targetted, not even half has been achieved so far”.  A report of the National Mission for Clean Ganga says that, out of the 28 projects sanctioned for UP, not even a single project launched after 2014 was near completion.

The CAG report referred above in this article finds out, “As per the target dates, award for the work of all the Sewage Treatment Plants was to be completed by September 2016. National Mission for Clean Ganga is yet to finalise and approve Detailed Project Reports for projects totalling 1,397 MLD capacity as of August 2017.”

STPs not the panacea

The STPs are not only taking time but the way these are being built also needs to be discussed.  These are centralised treatment plants and involve a lot of construction activities.  Most of our cities along Ganga as well as on other rivers are having areas which are difficult to lay sewer lines, install pumping stations and build other infrastructure.  Our major reliance on STPs therefore would not help us much in ending all the pollution woes of our rivers.

Going by the latest report of CWC on water quality hotspots in rivers other than Ganga, Indus and Bramhaputra basins, one could get a glimpse of how slow is the progress on building STPs.  The 67 severely polluted spots the CWC has marked fall in 12 states and the cities need STP capacity to treat 4477 MLD of sewer generated.  However, the existing capacity available in these stations is only for treating 298 MLD.  That’s a mere 6.7 per cent! The following table shows state wise pollution hotspots identified by CWC, and the gap that exists in their capacity to treat sewer.

Huge Gap: Cities catch up very slow

Then, there is no information that could tell us for sure that all these STPs are fully operational.  Our own studies in Mahanadi basin say that statistics such as this could be highly misleading.  The CWC admits it does not have information on other facilities being built by Pollution Control Boards and industrial houses.

Finding an inclusive solution is needed

Efficiency of the centralised STPs has also been in question.  In 2009, the CPCB had estimated that, 38,000 million litres per day (mld) of wastewater was being generated in the urban centres having population more than 50,000 in India (housing more than 70% of urban population). This had jumped to almost 57,000 mld by the year 2015.  That’s a jump of almost 50 per cent! The CPCB had in 2009 estimated that capacity developed for treating wastewater in these categories of cities was only for 11,000 mld.  Even government officials and ministers have admitted in public speeches that the treatment facility of 29 per cent is overestimated.  Comparing Census statistics and other statistics also makes it clear.  Several estimates put that the current treatment may be somewhere around 15 to 20 per cent of the total waste generated, or even less.

India has to find out newer and decentralised ways of managing its urban wastes if it seriously wants to abate pollution of the rivers.

Waste segregation, technological innovations for decentralised waste recycling and ecological approaches to recycle and reuse of water in initiatives like ‘constructed wetlands’ are some of the way forward.  We need to debate more on this subject and find out ways with complete participation of all stakeholders.

This article first appeared in Urban Update