Centre reluctant to provide funds for laying sewerage pipes

Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, August 3

The repeated changes by the Central Government in the plan to divert the open drain water to the sewerage treatment plants (STPs) to be built as a part of the task of cleaning the Ganga under the Namami Gange programme has left the Uttarakhand government indecisive.

Though the Central Government has agreed to provide funds for the construction of STPs in the first phase of the project, it is unwilling to provide funds for laying of sewerage pipes so that the waste water flowing through the open drains could lead to STPs.

“There has been a change in the plan, now we have been asked to focus on the construction of STPs so that water flowing in open drains could be contained through them. We will have to leave the work of laying the pipes for the next phase. It will be very difficult to link open drains in the towns selected in the hilly towns for STPs, without the necessary sewer lines leading up to them,” said Ranjit Sinha, additional secretary and state project director, State Mission for Clean Ganga (SMG).

Further, the Central Government has asked the state government to come up with a treatment plan for reusing the domestic waste filtered through the STPs set up at Jagjitpur (Hardiwar) and Muni Ki Reti (Rishikesh).

It had expressed its displeasure as the sizeable volume of the treated effluent was being disposed of in the Ganga.

“We had already complied by the directives issued by the Central Government so as to bring the bio-oxygen demand (BOD) of treated effluents that were being reverted back to the Ganga. But the government has again put a rider by saying that the plans would be only approved after we come up with a plan for setting up a treatment plant for the effluents discharged by the two STPs so that the water could be reused,” said Sunil Kumar, chief engineer, State Mission for Clean Ganga (SMG).