Sabarmati earns sobriquet of most-polluted waterbody
Pulkit Vasudha
Ahmedabad, July 23: For those of us who have grown up hearing the soulful strains of “Sabarmati ke sant tu ne kar diya kamaal”, the Sabarmati river still holds a special place. But what many don’t know is that the river on whose banks Gandhi set up his Ashram has turned into one of the most polluted waterbodies in the state.
The 11 kilometres that the Sabarmati courses through Ahmedabad makes one long murky stretch. While it flows through the densely-populated areas of the city, the river has to carry with it effluents discharged from domestic units. Towards the end of its journey in the city, industrial effluents also find an unregulated and illegal release into the Sabarmati. In all about 36 sewage lines flow into the Sabarmati making it one of most polluted water bodies. In a report tabled in the state Assembly recently, the Gujarat Pollution Control Board stated that most surface water bodies like rivers, lakes, and ponds do not meet the water quality parameters such as the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS).
Though the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has started laying a trunk line to intercept all the sewage outlets, the work will be completed only in March 2009. Till then, Sabarmati will continue to be polluted.
When it enters the city just before Ansol bridge, the water has high levels of dissolved oxygen (DO) and low levels of BOD. However, once the river begins to course through the highly populated regions between Railway Bridge near Sabarmati Ashram and Vasna-Narol, the DO levels deplete rapidly and the BOD levels shoot up.
According to the monitoring sessions of May, TDS in the Sabarmati is as low as 164 mg/litre at Ansol bridge but shoots up to 1,186 mg/litre at the Miroli pumping station just beyond the city limits. By the time the river reaches Kheda, the TDS levels drop to 572 mg/litre.
The BOD levels of the water at Ansol bridge is 4.7 mg/litre, which rises to 150 mg/litre when the river reaches Miroli, by which time the city’s industrial, domestic and corporation waste has found its way into the Sabarmati.
A total of 36 sewerage outlets empty into the Sabarmati while it flows through the city between Dafnala and Vasna barrage. The drainage lines of residential societies and commercial complexes are connected to these outlets. “Earlier, there were no Building Use regulations to monitor the drainage systems of these societies and the sewage lines were almost always connected to the sewerage lines,” said Hiral Mehta of Paryavaran Mitr, an environmental NGO.
There are approximately 14,000 slum dwellers on the banks of the Sabarmati that do not have any proper drainage system. The sewage from the slums also finds its way into the river. As part of its Sabarmati Riverfront Development programme, the AMC envisaged the diversion of sewage to treatment plants and began work on it in December 2005.
Source: Indian Express