The Hindu : New Delhi News : New proposal to clean the Yamuna

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 20, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

New proposal to clean the Yamuna

Sandeep Joshi

Jal Board to share expertise of authorities that cleaned the Thames and Chao Praya river

NEW DELHI: After spending over Rs.800 crores on the project in the past one decade, new plans are now being drawn up to clean the Yamuna. In one such move, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has decided to share expertise of the authorities that cleaned the Thames in London and the Chao Praya river in Bangkok.

At is board meeting held earlier this month, the water utility approved the proposal for inviting international competitive bidding from experts to study the problem and suggest the best option for improving the quality of flow in the Yamuna and for channelising the flow in the river. Significantly, untreated sewer, garbage dumping and industrial waste were the main reasons behind the deteriorating condition of the river.

According to a senior DJB official, after studying various cases of river pollution worldwide, their experts found that there were at least two such success stories that could be imitated to improve the state of the Yamuna. "Once heavily polluted, the Thames in London and the Chao Praya in Thai Capital Bangkok are now clean rivers. Their conditions were similar to what the Yamuna suffers today. Delhi's urban conditions and population pressure are similar to these two cities," he said.

Civic authorities

Stating that the civic authorities of these two Capitals are ready to help the DJB in cleaning the Yamuna, the official said the organisations set up for cleaning these two rivers adopted particular models to clean the rivers. "Our experts would be visiting the two countries for detailed discussions. Subsequently, a comprehensive plan would be prepared to implement the model prepared by experts to clean the Yamuna," he added.

Notably, in the recent years, the Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, accompanied by "experts" and senior officials involved in the cleaning process of the Yamuna, visited London twice and got updates on how the authorities in London cleaned the Thames and the river system management. But despite this, nothing concrete was done to emulate the highly successful Thames model.

Significantly, in its latest report, the Comptroller and Auditor General has described the Delhi Government's plan for controlling water pollution in the river as a "big flop" and the Rs. 872 crores spent on this project as having gone down the drain. "At the point of its exit from Delhi at Okhla, the water quality is unfit for sustaining aquatic life and does not conform to water quality of bathing standards," the report said.

"Despite 10 years of effort since 1994 and Rs. 872 crores spent on establishment of sewage treatment infrastructure for treatment of domestic and industrial sewage before its release into the river, the quality of water at the point where the river leaves Delhi has deteriorated drastically with large amounts of untreated sewage sill falling into the river.

The Dissolved Oxygen (DO) and Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) at the time of the Yamuna's exit from Delhi is unfit for any purpose with the BOD being 40 mg per litre against the norm of not more than 3 mg per litres while the DO deteriorates to almost nil against the norm of not less than 5 mg per litre. The coli form pollution that is already sub-standard at 217 times the norm when the river enters Delhi also deteriorates further to 1.39 lakh times the norm at the time of its exit from the Capital," the report added.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi