Sewage Canal (How to Clean the Yamuna)

At a time when nearly every river in India is polluted, this story of the Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi, is an example of the challenges faced by Indian municipalities, with increasing volumes of sewage and wastewater to manage. In this book, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) documents how the national cleaning programmes, beginning in 1985 with the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) and followed by the 10-year National River Conservation Plan (NRCP) in 1995, have failed to reduce pollution levels in India’s most polluted rivers despite the large sums of money that have been invested. The CSE uses this publication as a tool for “knowledge-based activism”, to communicate and lobby for development that is both sustainable and equitable, which here is related to river water quality.

Chapter 1 reviews the implementation of the NRCP across India, showing how, of the 34 most polluted rivers, just 10 received the majority of the funding (88 per cent) and how even these have not reduced their pollution levels. The Central Pollution Control Board data suggest that the government is incorrect in claiming that pollution levels have decreased.
Chapter 2 focuses on the Yamuna River. The analysis divides the Yamuna’s 1,376-kilometre course into five sections according to pollution levels, while a series of graphs illustrate the dissolved oxygen (DO), faecal coliform, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and nitrogen levels of the river sections between 1996 and 2004/05. Although Delhi has the most polluting stretch of river pollution, pollution levels upstream are increasing. Chapter 3 discusses the need to understand why previous strategies have failed, in order to form new strategies. It reviews earlier action plans and examines the regional (both state and town) allocation of funds. It highlights how funding was allocated according to the BOD load of a river, and how strategies focused on building sewage treatment plants, repairing sewage systems, building new sewage systems and low-cost toilets, and building crematoria to dispose of dead bodies. In addition, it details how the judiciary has led various strategies, including the establishment of committees to look into the specifics of Yamuna pollution. Yet these have yielded few results, and a minimum flow for the Yamuna, set by a memorandum of understanding, has not been maintained.

Chapter 4 examines the river pollution conditions in four cities, one upstream (Yamunanagar) and three downstream (Faridabad, Mathura and Agra) of Delhi. For each city, maps of existing sewage systems, graphs of pollution trends, and lists of pollution sources are used to highlight the poor wastewater treatment facilities and the increasingly polluted river sections. Key issues observed include: sewage treatment plants that are either underutilized or located too far from sources of waste; too high water extraction; low-cost toilets that are rarely used; and sewers that are blocked or leaking into open drains. Chapter 5 focuses on Delhi’s section of the Yamuna. Although only a 22-kilometre stretch of the river flows through the city, it carries more than 70 per cent of the water pollution load and thus has high BOD, coliform and heavy metal levels. The chapter highlights how the government claimed that illegal slum settlements were to blame for river pollution, but how pollution levels did not fall after these settlements were demolished.

Chapter 6 lists key reasons why the river remains dirty and the critical issues that need to be addressed. Chapter 7 discusses the need for cities to minimize their use of water prior to working on its conservation and re-use; in other words, reduce the need for water. It states that transport costs of wastewater treatment must be reduced by building more local plants and by designing new technologies, and that the institutional gap between monitoring pollution and understanding its causes needs to be closed.