The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report, tabled by the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti, that has listed Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati as the second-most polluted river in the country confirmed what the Gujarat High Court has been flagging for over a year while hearing a suo motu public interest litigation on the Sabarmati river pollution.
The longer stretch of the river, which runs from Raysan in Gandhinagar to Vautha downstream on the border of Ahmedabad’s Dholka block, is noted in the report as being the second-most polluted in India, behind a stretch of the Cooum River in Tamil Nadu.
The Raysan-Vautha stretch of the river recorded an alarming BOD of 292 mg/L and is only second to the Avadi-Sathya Nagar stretch of the Cooum river in Tamil Nadu with a BOD of 345 mg/L. For the CPCB assessment, a river is considered as not polluted if BOD is less than 3 mg/L.
Gujarat also has six—the highest number—of polluted water stretches in the Priority I category where the BOD is more than 30 mg/L. Notably, in 2018, there were only five such stretches.
Of the 25 rivers monitored in Gujarat for their water quality at 64 locations during 2019 and 2021, 25 locations on 13 rivers were found non-compliant with the prescribed water quality criteria with respect to BOD.
The CPCB found high levels of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)—indicating high consumption of dissolved oxygen by microorganisms—on the broader stretch of the river from upstream Raysan in Gandhinagar to downstream Vautha. However, the HC has been rapping the state government and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on the knuckle over the pollution of even the smaller stretch of the river—from Vasna to Pirana—that passes via the Ahmedabad city.
Cleaning expenditure
In July 2022, Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri stated before the Rajya Sabha that a whopping Rs 282.17 crore has been spent on cleaning Sabarmati in the past three years. This included a 155 MLD (million litres per day) STP worth Rs 151 crore at Pirana.
Another STP having a capacity of 25 MLD and worth Rs 27.5 crore was also completed near Shankar Bhuvan, Shahpur. According to data from 2022, AMC spent Rs 4.81 crore in the past three years for cleaning of “floating and green waste” from the Sabarmati River. Deepak Patel, in-charge general manager at SRFDCL, said “nearly 6,000-7000 tonnes of floating waste are cleaned up each year.”
Dismal picture
Notwithstanding the cleaning activities, the river continues to receive untreated sewage wastewater as well as industrial effluent to date, as indicated by a drone survey and quantification of 52 outfalls (the opening from the treatment plants into the river) along Sabarmati from May 2022 undertaken by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB).
In fact, the samples collected between January and December 2022 from the final outfall of Ahmedabad’s seven common effluent treatment plants (CETPs) that discharges treated industrial effluent into the river did not adhere to the permissible limits of pollution parameters. The drone survey recorded BOD as high as 360 milligrams per litre (mg/L) at the outfall of storm water drain passing through the Danilimda area and 265 mg/L from the outfall of a 60 MLD sewage treatment plant (STP). Ideally, an STP is supposed to discharge only treated domestic sewage/wastewater into the river.
According to environmentalist Rohit Prajapati, who is part of the court-appointed joint-task force (JTF) to look into the Sabarmati pollution, there are two major issues. “(First,) Flow continues in the Danilimda area where industries were closed down. Second, the discharge that comes from the industries through the Mega Pipeline and wastewater from unknown sources attached to the pipeline continue to discharge, despite the closure of non-adhering industries, which means there are still illegal connections,” says Prajapati who is part of the Vadodara-based NGO Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti.
According to Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Ltd (SRFDCL), “the intensive uses (for farming and various other informal economic activities) took their toll on the river”. “Untreated sewage flowed into the river through storm water outfalls and dumping of industrial waste posed a major health and environmental hazard,” SRFDCL, which was incorporated as a special purpose vehicle by AMC in 1997 after the inclusion of the river in the National River Conservation Plan in 1992, states.
Before the court
The HC has issued a number of directives to the government authorities, AMC as well as GPCB following which several industrial units have been shut down owing to their non-adherence to pollution standards. The civic body has also undertaken several drives to curb unauthorised or illegal wastewater or industrial connections to the CETPs and STPs.
At the same time, the court proceedings have also revealed the extent of the pollution and its causes. The court, on several occasions, has also pulled up AMC and GPCB for turning a blind eye and not revoking the permissions granted to discharge treated effluent in the river, despite being vested with sufficient powers to do the same.
In a January 2022 order, the HC noted, “Unfortunately, neither AMC nor GPCB paid any attention to all the aforesaid provisions of law… AMC was expected to act promptly at an appropriate point of time, more particularly, after realising the conditions were going from bad to worst… It proceeded in complete ignorance of the provisions of the GPMC Act, 1949″.
It also observed that the AMC has taken “no steps” to review all such permissions/consents granted years back to these textile industries to bring them in tune with the provisions of the Act. “Unfortunately, even the GPCB, in the recent past, granted permissions to discharge industrial effluent into the main trunk line (public sewer),” it further said.
As per a CPCB inspection of the river conducted in September 2021, upon request from the amicus curiae in the PIL, samples were collected from 10 locations along the river. Apart from BOD, several other parameters such as acidity (pH), temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen (DO), nitrate, nitrite, faecal coliform bacteria (FC/FCB), total coliform bacteria, cyanide, fluoride and heavy metals like chromium were measured.