The Hindu : New Delhi News : `Despite spending crores, Yamuna still runs dirty'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 19, 2007
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New Delhi

`Despite spending crores, Yamuna still runs dirty'

Staff Reporter

Something wrong with river cleaning programmes: CSE

NEW DELHI: The Capital has spent a whopping Rs. 1,188 crore to 1,491 crore on cleaning the Yamuna till 2006 but in spite of this massive investment the river runs dirtier today, said Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), here on Thursday.

Speaking at a function for release of CSE's latest publication, "Sewage Canal: How to Clean the Yamuna", Ms. Narain said: "There is obviously something fundamentally wrong in the way we are managing our river cleaning programmes. Our planners believe in spending money without understanding the connection between sewage and its disposal and river pollution."

Union Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz released the book. Also present on the occasion was Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

The book release was followed by a 32-minute video, "Faecal Attraction: Political Economy of Defecation", that explodes various myths about river cleaning. "The film is our way of connecting the river to our water and sewage," said its director, Pradip Saha.

Speaking about the Yamuna, the Deputy Coordinator of CSE's River Pollution Campaign, S. V. Suresh Babu, said: "The Yamuna has become dirtier, and so have the towns along its stretch. The Yamuna's 22-km stretch in Delhi is barely 2 per cent of the length of the river, but contributes over 70 per cent of the pollution load."

"Despite huge investment, the Yamuna remains dirty as ever. The river, in fact, is relatively clean till it enters Delhi at Wazirabad. It leaves the city transformed into a murky sewer. There has been no change in pollution levels in Delhi from 1996 and the river is still dead," added Mr. Babu.

Stating that there was a need to put in place a revival action plan to save the river, Ms. Sunita Narain said: "What we need is to maximise utilisation of the existing treatment facilities and ensure reuse of treated effluents. All waste must be trapped and treated and not mixed with untreated sewage."

`Inadequate'

"We must remember that whatever amount of waste we manage to treat will be inadequate, and the technology to treat the waste is hugely expensive. It will be a battle that we will never win if we continue fighting it the way that we have been doing all this while. The only way out is to rethink our approach," she added.

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