An Initiative to Clean Holy Ganga -- Now a 'Pollution-Filled Open Sewer'

[Guest guest]

NEW DELHI (November 24, 2006): It is India's holiest river and the

place where thousands of Hindus go daily to wash away their sins.

 

But the River Ganges is so polluted that nearly £800 million [uS.$1.5

billion; €1.15 billion] will have to be spent to clean it, Thiru Raja,

India's environment minister said yesterday.

 

He said that although more than £150 million had already been spent,

little progress had been made and more money was needed.

 

The admission was confirmation of what environmentalists have long

been saying: that India's principal river is severely sick and, along

many stretches, little more than an open sewer.

 

Action had been taken against offending industries for pumping waste

directly into the river, said the minister, who announced that 237

factories had been closed and another 600 served notice for failing to

apply safeguards.

 

Though industrial effluent accounts for only 15 of the total waste

flowing into the Ganges, it has a worse impact than municipal sewage.

An estimated six million tons of chemical fertilisers and about 9,000

tons of pesticides are added to the river each year.

 

About 350 million Indians - almost one in 14 of the world's population

- live on the banks of the Ganga, as Hindus call the river they revere

as a goddess.

 

The lack of proper sanitation and sewage treatment facilities means

that as much as a billion litres of mostly untreated raw human waste

enters the river every day.

 

So fast is the population of the Ganges river basin growing that it is

estimated the amount of untreated sewage will have more than doubled

by the year 2020 if nothing is done.

 

Another problem, particularly in and around the holy city of Varanasi,

is that inadequate cremation procedures result in partially burnt or

sometimes unburnt corpses floating in the river.

 

The government set up a river-cleansing plan, the Ganga Action Plan,

with British and Dutch support in 1985. But, despite the creation of

several waste treatment facilities, the scheme has been hampered by

mismanagement and misdirection of funds.

 

"Despite the Ganga Action Plan, a lot needs to be done to clean up the

river," said Bharat Lal, of the Centre for Science and the Environment.

 

"One of the problems is that so many parts of our cities remain

without sewers. The untreated sewage from these areas discharges

directly via open drains into the river. This is also one of the

reasons why existing treatment capacity remains grossly under-utilised."

 

The major polluting industry along the Ganges is the leather industry,

especially near Kanpur. Other culprits include pharmaceutical

companies, electronics plants, textile and paper industries,

fertiliser manufacturers and oil refineries.

 

Most of the fish in the river have been killed off, with fishermen

forced to turn to menial jobs or begging.

 

BURDEN OF FILTH

 

THE Yamuna, a holy Indian river which flows through Delhi, is highly

polluted. Along the stretch where it flows through the city, it is

clinically dead. With residents pouring three billion litres of sewage

into it every day, it is little more than an open drain.

 

"It is one of the dirtiest rivers I have ever seen," said Steve

Fleischli, executive director of the US-based Waterkeeper Alliance

group on a visit to Delhi this week.

 

"A city cannot claim world-class status if its river is as polluted

and neglected as this. With close to 25 million people, Delhi treats

only 600 million gallons of sewage a day. That is quite unfair to the

river."

 

A government report revealed last year that the level of faecal

coliform in the Yamuna was 100,000 times the safe limit for bathing.

Yesterday, boatmen and other riverside dwellers were washing clothes

and kitchenware in the foul-smelling water.

 

SOURCE: The Scotsman, Edinburgh. £800m bill to cleanse holy river

that's a pollution-filled open sewer. By DAVID ORR IN DELHI

URL: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1747242006