River of effluents

River of effluents

News:

1. The Clean Ganga project has a long way to go.

Important facts:

2. National Mission for Clean Ganga(NMCG):

• It runs the ‘Namami Gange’ mission-India’s most ambitious endeavour to clean the Ganga river.
• The NMCG has Rs 20,000 crore, centrally-funded, non-lapsable corpus and consist of nearly 228 projects.
• The mission also has projects to clean the ghats, rid the river of biological contaminants and improve rural sanitation and afforestation.

3. Pollution  contributors:

• Most of the Ganga’s pollution is due to five States on the river’s main stem — Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
• Approximately 12,000 million litres a day (MLD) of sewage is generated in the Ganga basin, for which there is currently a treatment capacity of just 4,000 MLD.
• Industrial pollution from tanneries in Kanpur, distilleries, paper and sugar mills in the Kosi, Ramganga and Kali river catchments is a major contributor.

4. Status of the cleaning exercise:

• Recently, the National Green Tribunal pulled up the government for its tardy job and said that the stretches between Haridwar and Unnao were “unfit for drinking and bathing” and that authorities should display “health warnings”.
• This year treatment plants at Haridwar and Varanasi begun to be constructed.
• In May 2014, there were 31 treatment plants with a capacity of 485 MLD.
• Till 2018, 94 projects, with a treatment capacity of 1,928 MLD, were under way.