Punjab, Haryana vow to clean Ghaggar

Naveen S Garewal & Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 18

The project of cleaning up Ghaggar river seems to have brought the Punjab and Haryana Chief Ministers closer.

Manohar Lal Khattar today accepted Parkash Singh Badal’s demand for lowering the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) level of effluents discharged into Ghaggar despite his team expressing reservations, while Punjab was quick to respond by inviting him as the chief guest for the final match of the fifth Kabaddi World Cup.

The new bond between the two has been the talk of political circles, especially after “not-so-good” beginning of their relations. Badal was reportedly sidelined at Khattar’s star-studded swearing-in ceremony in October. But that is a thing of past. The two leaders dined at Chhattisgarh Governor Balramji Dass Tandon’s house last night.

Though the two were scheduled to meet at 10 am today, Khattar changed his day’s plan after Badal requested him to meet at 9 am. The meeting lasted for less than an hour where Khattar asked his team to accept Badal’s demand to lower the BOD level to 10 mg/litre, saying that the level prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board was 30 mg/litre. Haryana maintained that of the total 252.5 million litre per day (MLD) domestic effluents discharged into the Ghaggar by its towns, 207.5 MLD was treated.

“The purpose is to clean the river, which meanders through Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana. If Punjab is trying to keep the BOD level at 10 mg/litre, we should also find ways to bring it down,” Khattar is learnt to have told his officers. However, the officers said that of the 20 towns discharging domestic effluents into the river, 12 have sewage treatment plants (STPs). They not only objected to lowering of the BOD level, but also to the data collected by Punjab which, they said, was much higher than the actual. The joint committees of both states have identified 38 points in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, from where effluents are discharged into Ghaggar. In Punjab, STPs and common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) for all 29 points (other than Dera Bassi and Sanaur) are either set up or about to be commissioned. In Haryana, which has seven effluent-discharging points, STPs have been made functional in 12 towns of the 20 located along the river, whereas work on eight has begun.

Khattar asked his team to follow the Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) technology in setting up new STPs for big towns, which automatically brings down the BOD level to 10 mg/litre in the long run.