Military veterans demand statutory body for Yamuna river cleaning

A group of military veterans on Tuesday demanded the establishment of a separate statutory body for cleaning the Yamuna river, which they claim is a "slow poison" for the people in the Delhi-NCR region.

The group, known as "Atulya Ganga," presented the results of a survey evaluating the river's health here, pointing out that the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) primarily focuses on the Ganga and lacks sufficient efforts to clean other tributaries, including the Yamuna.

Colonel (retd) Mike Keshwar said the Yamuna requires its own agency due to the significant cleaning task, as the Ganga's cleanup itself is massive. The NMCG, established under an Act, aims to comprehensively clean the Ganga and its tributaries.

The Atulya Ganga team collected samples from 29 critical locations along the Yamunanagar-Prayagraj stretch, testing them on 16 parameters related to water quality, including pH, turbidity, hardness, chloride, chlorine, iron, fluorides, bacteria, dissolved oxygen and total dissolved solids.

Shockingly, only one sample was deemed "good," while 12 were of fair quality and 17 were poor.

One of the key parameters of the river's health is the dissolved oxygen level, which is required to be four parts per million (PPM) or better.

The samples showed that the dissolved oxygen level was less than one part per million (PPM), signifying severe pollution, the veterans said.

The group also aims to create a 'Yamuna Health Dashboard' using satellite data, remote sensing, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.

This will make a 24x7 "Water Quality Index of Rivers" available in the public domain which will be an effective tool to report the pollution levels, pinpoint the sources of contamination and drive accountability, said Lt Gen (retd) Alok Kler, CEO, Atulya Ganga.

The Yamuna Health Dashboard will provide insights to policy makers, government, and non-governmental agencies to make informed decisions and create more effective environmental policies, he said.

Experts say untapped wastewater from unauthorised colonies and jhuggi-jhopri clusters, and poor quality of treated wastewater discharged from STPs and common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) is the main reason behind high levels of pollution in the river in the Delhi-NCR region.

The river can be considered fit for bathing if biological oxygen demand is less than 3 milligram per litre and dissolved oxygen is greater than 5 milligram per litre.

Delhi generates around 770 million gallons a day (MGD) of sewage. The 35 STPs located at 20 locations across Delhi can treat up to 630 MGD of sewage and have been utilising around 85 per cent of their capacity. The rest of the untreated sewage falls into the river directly.

Government data shows that only 9 out of the 35 operational STPs in the capital meet the prescribed standards for wastewater (BOD and TSS less than 10 mg per litre). Together, they can treat 160 million gallons of wastewater a day.

According to the Delhi government's Outcome Budget, 29 per cent of the sewage generated in Delhi in 2021-22 fell into the Yamuna untreated. It was 28 per cent in 2019-20 and 26 per cent in 2020-21.

The city government is upgrading and rehabilitating the existing STPs to be able to meet the prescribed norms and reduce the pollution load in the Yamuna.

However, several projects have been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, air pollution-related construction ban, and delay in land allotment and tree cutting permissions.

Sewer networks have been laid in just 747 of the 1,799 unauthorised colonies in Delhi.

Multiple reports submitted by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to the Union Jal Shakti Ministry have highlighted that the river cannot become fit for bathing in the absence of a minimum environment flow -- the minimum quantity of water flow that a river must have in order to preserve its ecosystems and meet the bathing standards.

A study conducted by the National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, had in 2019 recommended that 23 cubic metre per second (cumec) water (437 million gallons a day) be released in the river from the Hathnikund Barrage in Haryana's Yamuna Nagar district in the lean season for sustaining downstream ecosystems.

At present, only 10 cumecs (190 MGD) is released from the barrage. A gap of 13 cumecs (247 MGD) remains.

According to the ministry, the water sharing agreement of 1994 among the riparian states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi is due for revision only in 2025.

According to the DPCC, an e-flow of 23 cumecs will bring down the level of biological oxygen demand from 25 milligram per litre to 12 milligram per litre and other steps being taken will bring it down further.