Some improvement reported in Ganga water quality

The quality of water in the river Ganga has shown some improvement after the implementation of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP), the Ministry of Environment & Forests said today.

An official press release said that this had been stated in a report prepared by the Planning Commission in May, 2009 on the utilisation of funds and assets created through GAP in various states.

The report said that the monitoring of water quality done by reputed institutions at 16 monitoring stations on the river during 1986-2008 showed a reduction in Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) in all the stations except two, indicating an improvement in water quality.

However, at 7 of these 16 locations, the BOD levels do not meet the standards for bathing water, it said.

In 1986, the BOD, which is an indicator of pollution of river water quality, ranged from 5.5 to 15.5 mg/1 in the critical stretch of the Ganga from Kannauj to Varanasi. This had come down to between 2.2 and 4.8 mg/1 in 2008.

The report said Dissolved Oxygen (DO) levels, which indicate the health of the river, had shown improvement at four locations. The DO levels, which were in the range of 6.6 to 5.9 mg/1 in 1986 in the Allahabad-Varanasi stretch, had improved to 7.3 to 8.4 mg/1 in 2008.

The criteria for bathing water quality is BOD equal to or less than 3.0 mg/1 and DO equal to or more than 5.0 mg/1.

In terms of total coliform count, the permissible limits for bathing water were exceeded at a number of monitoring stations, it said.

According to the release, the situation would have been worse without the sewage treatment infrastructure created under GAP. It said the coliform count had increased particularly at pilgrimage places due to bathing by pilgrims.

The report said the major factors affecting the water quality are wide gap between domestic sewage generation and sewage treatment capacity created, discharge of untreated industrial effluents in the industrial pockets along the rivers, and under-utilisation of sewage treatment plants (STPs) due to reasons like irregular power supply, absence of connections between domestic sewage drains and STPs and failure of States to provide for maintenance cost of the STPs.

The first phase of GAP was launched in June, 1985, as a 100 per cent Centrally-funded scheme and aimed at preventing the pollution of the Ganga and to improve its water quality.

NNN