Polluting Yamuna: Who is responsible?

Who is to be blamed for high pollution level of river Yamuna? Delhi or Haryana. None of them, if the claims of both the state governments are to be believed.

Updated on: Feb 8, 2011, 23:15:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Who is to be blamed for high pollution level of river Yamuna? Delhi or Haryana. None of them, if the claims of both the state governments are to be believed.

Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh will now try to find an answer at a meeting with Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit.

"We seem to be going round -and-round blaming each other," Ramesh said, after both the state governments blamed each other for the river’s pathetic condition and refused to act.

Yamuna in Delhi is almost dead with water not suitable for even bathing at most places, leave along supporting aquatic life. It is mainly due to high ammonia level emanating from high discharge of industrial pollutants in the river.

Delhi Jal Board (DJB) in December 2010 had to shut down its two major water treatment plants because of high ammonia content and blamed domestic effluents from Haryana townships neighbouring Delhi — Panipat, Samalkha and Sonepat — for it.

Ramesh was quick to act and asked Hooda to ensure monitoring of water quality in river Yamuna in Haryana and take action against polluters under section 5 of Environment Protection Act, which allows the state pollution control board to shut the industries.

Hooda wrote back saying that level of ammonia in Yamuna water at Palla, the entry point into Delhi, was nil as per joint monitoring report of Central and state Pollution Control Boards. The bio-chemical oxygen demand (BOD) level was 1.10 to 2.70 milligram per litre against the permissible limit of 3 milligram per litre.

"It is pertinent to mention that there is no discharge of effluents from the towns of Sonepat and Samalkha directly into the river Yamuna. The effluent from Panipat was being treated," said Captain Ajay Singh Yadav, Haryana environment minister, in a letter to the union environment minister.

"As a result the quality of water in Yamuna before entering Delhi remained within the permissible limits."

The deteriorating of the river starts in Delhi, the Haryana government has claimed. Quoting water quality figures between January and November 2010, the Haryana government said the BOD level at Badarpur, where it enters Haryana, ranged between 12 - 30 milligram per litre.

"Haryana is getting polluted water from the state of Delhi due to discharge of untreated/partially treated effluents from 22 drains falling into river Yamuna in Delhi," Yadav said, in a letter to Ramesh last week, seeking directions to Delhi government to control pollution in the river.

The Najafgarh drain receives large amount of untreated sewage and is a cause for pollution in Yamuna, thereby making it stink during dry season. Despite court orders the government had failed to rejuvenate the river.

Ramesh wants to take the task for cleaning river Yamuna by first resolving pending issues between the two states and then implementing a new plan for creating water reservoirs to provide sufficient fresh water supply in the river to support aquatic life.

Ministry officials expect a meeting between three of them soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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