A senior engineer with the Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam, which looks after the state’s sewage treatment plants (STPs), has confirmed that Varanasi city discharged at least 100 million litres of untreated sewage into the river every day.
Other Jal Nigam officials and a river pollution expert, Saurabh Singh, said the actual volume of untreated sewage flowing into the Ganga was 200 MLD (million litres a day) in Varanasi.
Singh said the situation had been made worse by the slowing of the Ganga’s flow in recent years because of two ongoing government projects — dredging to set up a cruise service, and widespread construction for a riverfront tourism programme.
According to a Jal Nigam official: “Varanasi produces 450 MLD of sewage every day but we treat only 250 MLD. The remaining 200 MLD flows directly into the river. This is because the five STPs here don’t work at full capacity. The reasons are many, and include poor management.”
The government is building huge platforms along the Ganga to develop the riverfront under the Namami Gange programme. Several food kiosks have already come up at Assi Ghat.
Another source of dirty water in the Ganga is the Varuna river that originates near Jaunpur and flows into the Ganga at Varanasi near the Adi Keshav Ghat. While the Ganga’s waters are green in midstream these days because of an uncontrolled growth of algae, white foams of dirt cover the Varuna’s surface.
Source: The Telegraph
Photo courtesy: The Telegraph
