The Hindu : NGOs welcome High Court order on water table

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 15, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

NGOs welcome High Court order on water table

By Bindu Shajan

NEW DELHI, JAN. 14. With the water table dipping at the rate of 10 metres per year in certain localities of the Capital, environmentalists have welcomed the first-ever effort of its kind by the High Court to set up a four-member committee comprising top-rung officials from the Union Water Resources and Environment and Forests Ministry, the Central Ground Water Board and the Delhi Jal Board to study the status of Delhi's groundwater. The committee, set up last December, is likely to present its report by February 2004.

Aimed at taking stock of the way groundwater is being used in the Capital, the High Court has directed the committee to review various issues relating to groundwater and also study various policies initiated in other countries relating to pricing of this resource.

Talking about the move, Sumita Dasgupta, co-ordinator of the Natural Resource Management Unit, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said: "While we welcome the move, we believe that the committee must focus on setting up infrastructure to constantly monitor the rate of extraction. At present, the Capital has no statistics available to quantify the actual amount that is being drawn out every day. As per official figures, 90,000 licensed tube wells and hand pumps operate in the city. But the government admits that more than double this number is being used to mine groundwater unofficially and therefore not accounted for.''

Meanwhile, various other agencies working in the area have demanded that the committee look into not just the status of the groundwater in the Capital but also initiate measures to put in place a continuous monitoring system. This becomes important in light of the fact that Delhi's groundwater shows perilously high concentration of harmful substances such as heavy metals, nitrate, total dissolved solids, and bacterial contaminants.

Talking about the major causes of contamination, Vinod Kumar Jain, Director of Tapas, a non-government organisation working in the field of water conservation, said: "Domestic sewage and industrial effluents along with the solid waste dump yards are the prime contributors to this mess. It is important to understand that this issue cannot be dealt with merely by installing a row of sewage treatment plants or landfill sites. The government needs to be vigilant to ensure that the city's waste is actually reaching these plants.''

He adds that the enforcing agencies also require the co-operation of the people to enforce various environmental friendly laws. "The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) prohibits sinking of tube wells in all the `notified' zones in Delhi. But the order is flouted rampantly. Indiscriminate alterations in land-use pattern can trigger major environmental upsets. So it is important to make the citizens aware of the magnitude of the ground water problem.''

Seconding the idea, Sumita adds: "Water management can be done most effectively by offering the citizens authentic, focussed and easily accessible information on the actual status. Also given the woeful track record of the State agencies, the Committee should propose setting up of a regulatory body. And this must include representatives from civil society.''

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