The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed the Uttar Pradesh State Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) to identify and install sewage treatment plants (STPs) at major sources of pollution in the Kali river, a tributary of the Ganga, as part of the latter’s clean up.
Following the direction, the UPPCB has identified 26 large sewage lines in six districts of western U.P. which empty into the Kali.
Inspection soon
According to Atulesh Yadav, a local officer with the UPPCB, “The NGT has asked the UPPCB and Jal Nigam to jointly work to prevent pollution in the Kali river. It will be done as part of the Prime Minister's Namami Gange project. Twenty-six big sewage lines, which do not have STPs, have been identified in Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Bulandshahr, Aligarh and Kannauj. The process will soon start to inspect these sewage lines,” he said.
Kali river originates from Antwada village of Khatauli block in Muzaffarnagar and joins the Ganga in Kanpur after passing through Meerut, Hapur, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad, Aligarh and Kannauj districts.
According to Raman Tyagi, whose petition in the NGT about pollution of the Kali river led to the Tribunal directive, over two decades ago, the Kali used to be a clean river and its water was used for drinking by villagers living on its banks.
Mr. Tyagi has been monitoring the pollution in the Kali, Krishna and Hindon and other tributaries of the Ganga in western U.P.
Industrial effluents
“But industrial effluents from paper and sugar mills, and slaughter houses, with unhealthy chemical wastes, besides untreated sewage over the last two decades has made the river poisonous. It has become so poisonous that no living organism is found in the water.
“It not only pollutes the Ganga but the poisonous water has contaminated drinking water through the seepage in thousands of villages located on its banks,” said Mr. Tyagi, founder of Neer Foundation which works on the issue of water and renewable energy in western U.P.
Seal handpumps
“Our investigation showed that water in villages has been seriously polluted and is manifest in medical problems for villagers who consume the drinking water from hand pumps. We requested that these hand pumps be sealed and the government arrange for clean drinking water in those areas. We also prayed that the NGT should ensure serious measures to prevent pollution of Kali, as it was a tributary of the Ganga and its pollution becomes the pollution of Ganga,” he told The Hindu .
