The river rises in the Nandi Hills and rolls down almost 200 kilometres to meet the Cauvery at a place called Sangama. The Arkavathy has been the lifeline for farmers for many a century. Drinking water too came to Bengaluru from this river for almost a hundred years.
An industrial unit located itself close to the river to take advantage of the groundwater available in plenty around it. Open wells were dug and all the water requirement for the factory came from it. A well could yield water at 10,000 litres per hour or more. In a day, it could provide more than 150,000 litres of water.
Slowly the river regime was altered by human activity. A dam was built on the river, then two and finally a third. Water was stocked up and the river received water downstream of the dam only during floods.
Sand mining came as a major threat. Almost 20 feet and more of sand was removed from vast stretches of the river to feed the limitless need of a growing metropolis. The river could no longer retain water in summer months and groundwater recharge from the river became a thing of the past.
The open wells could no longer provide the waters required and so borewells had to be dug by the factory. These would yield waters but the water was salty. That meant that the factory had first to install a demineralisation plant and later on a Reverse Osmosis plant to remove the salts from the water. Energy consumption and the cost of water had gone up.
The borewells meanwhile started drying up. More and more had to be sunk and these were getting deeper and deeper. The water quality was constantly deteriorating. Water from the Cauvery has reached the unit but is very expensive.
Ramanagaram story
The small town of Ramanagaram nearby has grown and is growing. Large volumes of sewage started flowing and reaching the river. To address the problem, with the help of the Asian Development Bank a sewage treatment plant was set up far away from the town and the river. The plant has barely functioned and even after ten years of it being set up, it is still to get operational. The sewage meanwhile flows in the Arkavathy, turning it black, and sometimes when slaughter house waste blood comes in, the river goes red.
The factory meanwhile which employs more than 700 people directly has to look at alternative means of water. It considers rainwater harvesting as one alternative. Water use efficiency and water conservation and recycling being another. It is happy to buy treated waste-water from the waste-water treatment plant of the town if necessary.
The overall deterioration and the death of a river causes many miseries, one of which is the effect it has on industrial production and employment. India has reached a stage where the very economic growth will be affected badly if steps are not taken to reverse the deterioration and make sure that our rivers flow clean.
The setting up of a river basin institution by the State is an urgent step necessary to understand and manage the negative impact of each action in the river basin which can have cascading consequences. The Arkavathy River Basin Institution is the need of the hour. Creating and arming the right institutions with power and responsibility would be the first step in saving our rivers. Indeed it would be water wisdom.
