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CAG audit Report unveils poison rivers
Ranchi, January 22, 2012: A first-ever water pollution audit carried out by the
Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pegged Jharkhand at the bottom of the performance chart with most river conservation projects
lying incomplete in the state. According to the report, Performance Audit of Water Pollution in India,
the Ganga, Damodar and Subernarekha were selected for pollution abatement projects in Jharkhand under the National River Conservation
Programme (NRCP), which was launched in 1995.
As part of the programme, 15 projects were taken up at a cost of Rs 4.38
crore in 12 towns - Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Ghatshila, Bokaro-Kargali, Chirkunda, Dugdha, Jharia, Ramgarh, Sahebganj, Sindri, Sudamdih and
Telmachu. The report was tabled in Parliament on December 16.
The audit test-checked four projects being implemented under NRCP in
Ranchi and Jamshedpur to control pollution in the Subernarekha at a cost of Rs 2.2 crore, and found that intended objectives had not been achieved.
The report said a crematorium to be constructed as part of one of the projects in Jamshedpur at a cost of Rs 54 lakh, which should have been
ready by 1996, was yet to be built. A low cost sanitation project for which community toilets were to be constructed, also did not take off.
As far as the riverfront development plan was concerned, three ghats " Baroda, River Meet Point and Mango " out of a proposed six, had been
completed and handed over to the local bodies between July 2002 and April 2003.
The riverfront development project in Ranchi was to be completed in July
1997 but out of the proposed five ghats, only four "Hatia bridge, Kachnar Toli, the one near Subernarekha bridge and Namkum (Khijri) bridge
" were completed and handed over to RMC in 2001. Ironically, the state had no information about the sewage generated,
treated and discharged into Subernarekha in Jamshedpur and Ranchi, the report said.
On the water quality of Subernarekha after it left
Jamshedpur, the report said while levels of total coliform, which indicates organic pollution, were not measured, biochemical oxygen demand
(BOD) met the criteria.
Farm economy hit by under-priced water says Stiglitz
Kolkata, January 17, 2012: Nobel prize-winning economist Prof. Joseph Stiglitz feels that
under-priced water and electricity has severely hamstrung Indian agricultural
economy. Lack of enough water in India has “raised the question of sustainability
of agriculture economy”, he said responding to a query from Business Line . In a chance interview, Prof.
Stiglitz, who has been in the city this week, said absence of a second Green Revolution, under investment
for decades and limited extent of irrigation created a situation where
scarcity of water led to large scale pumping out of ground water, which in turn caused water table to drop seriously.
Since water was under-priced – in some cases water and power to draw it from sources were zero priced – unviability of agriculture was built
into the Indian system. “But if you have to deal with poverty and food security, you cannot
afford to ignore the relationship between cost and price”. Prof. Stiglitz said that the World Bank studied the problems of Indian
rural economy and poverty at length when he was the chief economist of the bank.
He felt that though farm land in India cannot be described as “under-priced”, the issue of “compensation” for land in case of
acquisition was a vexed and debatable one. Source: The Hindu Businessline
Indian rivers turning into drains: Report
New Delhi, January 06, 2012 (ANI): A recent report has suggested that most of the
Indian rivers are in a bad state and most of them are turning into drains due to the
mismanagement of country's sewage system. The Center for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based advocacy and
research organization recently released its 7th report, entitled as
"Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers
and drowning in its own excreta. The report took three and half years of research work and surveys of
water and wastewater management of around 71 cities in India and is present in two different volumes."Every city was the same old story, it had devastated its surface water, it was depleting its ground water and it had no plan for managing its water or
wastewater," said the editor of the report, Souparno Banerjee.
"As a result of neglect and bad planning, many cities have turned their
rivers into drains, and the citizens who live around them no longer remember that they were once pristine sources of water," he adds.
The report has pointed out various rivers which have turned into drains
due to mismanagement of sewage system as well as because of ever growing Indian cities, The India Real Time reports.
"The Budha Nullah in Ludhiana was once a darya, or river. It had
freshwater which flowed clean. One generation changed its form and its
name," said Sunita Narain, the Director General of the research and advocacy organization.
Narain also specifically pointed out towards the Mithi river of Mumbai
which has now officially turned into a drain and isn't able to perform
its original function of carrying the floodwaters from the city to the
ocean. "It was called a river. It flowed like a river. But today even an
official environmental status report only knows this living river as a
storm-water drain. One more city has lost its river in one generation,"
she adds. Narain blamed India's negligence of wastewater management responsible
for this woeful state of the Indian rivers. "There is complete lack of data, research and understanding on this
issue in the country," she added. (ANI) |
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Water-related News 2012
