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No equipment to monitor groundwater quality in Gurgaon: RTI plea
There is no way to know the quality of water that the residents of Gurgaon drink, and use for bathing and cooking, a Right to Information (RTI) plea has revealed.
There is no way to know the quality of water that the residents of Gurgaon drink, and use for bathing and cooking, a Right to Information (RTI) plea has revealed.
The sole Ground Water Cell in Rajiv Chowk, off the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, does not, according to the reply, have equipment to monitor level of elements like Fluoride, Iron, Nitrate, Chlorine and total dissolved salts (TDS)-the elements in water whose increased levels leads to contamination. The cell measures only the Chloride and Salinity levels in city’s ground water.
In these circumstances, one cannot get the clear picture of the contamination levels in ground water of Gurgaon which is home to over 250 Fortune 500 companies. The concern assumes significance as the state government is scheduled to host its first Happening Haryana Global Investors’ Summit in Gurgaon in two weeks.
Through the seven-point plea, RTI activist Aseem Takyar had sought information about levels of Chloride, Salinity, Iron, Flouride, Nitrate, Chlorine and TDS in water from Hydrologist, Ground Water Cell, Gurgaon on January 12, 2016. A month later, Takyar got a reply which said that the office doesn’t have equipments to monitor the levels of any of the elements except Salinity and Chloride.
“The laboratory of this office is not equipped for analysis of these elements,” the reply said. There were separate replies for Iron, Flouride, Nitrate, Chlorine and TDS.
However, the Chandigarh office of Central Ground Water Board provided levels of Chloride (14mg/l to 765mg/l, salinity (300-307microSiemens/cm), Fluoride (0.19-2.01mg/l) and Iron (0.39mg/l) in Gurgaon’s ground water based on 19 samples collected last year. This office too had no data available related to the TDS and Chloride levels.
“It is shocking to know that there is no exact data about how safe is the water,” Takyar said.
To note, as per surveys conducted by various organisations including the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), water contamination is a major problem in Gurgaon where almost 40% of the ground water available for drinking or cooking has high level of fluoride, chlorine and TDS.
The water in the city has 7,000 mg per litre level of TDS against the permissible range between 500 mg per litre and 2,000 mg per litre, according to these surveys.
