State in troubled waters

Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, May 20

The quality of riverwaters in the state has only deteriorated with the passage of time. Such is the situation that not even a single river falls in Category A (having water fit for direct drinking). The successive governments have failed to check the pollution levels, with the grade slipping to E in several areas.

Ahead of the 2012 Vidhan Sabha elections, both Congress and SAD had promised to frame a clean riverwater policy, but nothing of the sort ever happened.

In the past over 20 years, the water quality has gone down to Category E. “The parties failed to keep their poll promises. Nothing has been done in this direction so far. The issue is only politicised. Our state is yet to frame and implement a healthy policy aiming at improving the water quality,” said environmentalists.

In February 2017, the Supreme Court had set a three-month deadline for industrial units across the country to set up effluent treatment plants (ETP), failing which their operations would be shut. Acting on it, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) had issued common notices, warning to act after the deadline, but did not do anything against the erring units.

The state has as many as 3,500 industrial units, with a majority of them claiming to treat wastewater before releasing it. “But the reality is far from different as several industrial units are still releasing untreated water,” said a top PPCB official. “All politicians do is issue statements. They are busy saving the erring industrial lobby,” the official said. Sources said the recent Beas incident spoke volumes of the apathy and the nexus between officials and industrialists.

On Saturday, the PPCB had ordered inspection of all sugar mills and distilleries following the death of a large number of fish. The directions were issued to all officials by PPCB chairman KS Pannu.

Not only the industry, which claims to have almost 70 per cent of its effluents treated, civic bodies in the state too are releasing wastewater into rivers. At present, 87 sewage treatment plants (STPs) are operational in 67 cities of the state and only 15 meet the water quality norms after treatment primarily due to limited funds to run these STPs. As many as 99 cities are yet to set up STPs. The major cities that are polluting water channels include Jalandhar, Amritsar, Zirakpur, Mohali and Ludhiana, where only two out of the five STPs meet the water quality target.

Water samples collected from the Sutlej, Beas, Ravi and Ghaggar are of poor quality and fall in Category E. Principal, Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Kuldeep Kumar said the incident was unfortunate and their teams had already been working on assessing the exact loss to the aquatic life.

Polluted water enters Rajasthan

Abohar: Contaminated water from the Beas reportedly reached Abohar and Balluana segments and even entered the neighbouring Sriganganagar district on Sunday. It has added to the woes of  hundreds of farmers who have not been able to sow cotton due to poor supply of canal water. Most of the canals were closed for three weeks in April for cleaning. Officials claimed that on Sunday, only 1,440 cusecs of water was flowing into the Gang canal that fed Sriganganagar district and it was highly polluted. Fazilka Deputy Commissioner Isha Kalia told the Public Health 

Department and water supply and sanitation officials not to store contaminated water in reservoirs and undertake sampling on a day-to-day basis. OC

Samples Taken 

Muktsar: A team of the Punjab State Pollution Control Board (PPCB) on Sunday collected water samples from canals, saying the situation would improve by Monday. Daljit Singh, SDO, PPCB, said, “The oxygen level had gone down.” Deputy Commissioner Sumeet Jarangal, too, said there was no need to panic. TNS