River Tawi, Jhelum among 8 polluted water bodies in J&K
In a startling disclosure, eight major rivers and streams of Jammu and Kashmir including Jammu’s lifeline Tawi and Srinagar’s heart Jhelum have been found as polluted with high content of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD).
The two among these eight have been observed with over 10 BOD mg/l and fall in the poor category while the rest six of them are in moderately clean group.
As per government study, eight major rivers and streams namely Tawi in Jammu, Devika in Udhampur, Banganga in KatraReasi ,Basanter in Samba of Jammu province and ChuntKol, Gawkadal, Jhelum in Srinagar and Lidder near Pahalgam in Anantnag of Kashmir province has been found polluted with substantial content of BOD milligrams per liters.
It was revealed that the highest 14 BOD mg/l has been observed in Jammu’s Tawi river followed by Srinagar’s ChuntKol with 11.2 BOD mg/l.
With the highest content of pollutants both Tawi and Chuntkol fall in the poor category under III priority class.
The other six rivers and streams namely Banganga, Basanter, Gawkadal, Jhelum Lidder come under moderately clean category in zone IV and V.
“Maximum BOD observed mg/l at Banganga along Katra is 6.2, Devika along Udhampur is 10, Jhelum, Srinagar to Baramulla is 7.8 and Lidder along Pahalgam is 7,” it said adding, “All these rivers and streams come under priority class IV”.
“Basanter along Samba has been observed with 4.2 BOD mg/l andGawkadal along Shergarhi with BOD 3.2 in priority class V”, the study further said.
This was stated by Union Minister of Jal Shakti during parliamentary proceedings while replying to a group of questions.
The minister further said that Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in association with Pollution Control Boards/Committees in different States/Union Territories (UTs) have been monitoring the water quality of rivers and other water bodies, through a network of 4294 monitoring stations under the National Water Quality Monitoring Programme.
The minister further said that cleaning and rejuvenation of rivers is a continuous process.
For conservation of rivers, the Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation (DoWR, RD& GR) has been supplementing the efforts of the States/UTs by providing financial and technical assistance for abatement of pollution in identified stretches of rivers in the country through the Central Sector Scheme of Namami Gange for rivers in Ganga basin, and the Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National River Conservation Plan (NRCP) for other rivers.
NRCP has so far covered polluted stretches on 36 rivers in 80 towns spread over 16 States in the country with the project sanctioned cost of Rs. 6248.16 crore, and inter-alia, a sewage treatment capacity of 2745.7 million liters per day (mld) has been created.
Under the Namami Gange programme, a total of 409 projects, including 177 projects for sewage treatment of 5269.87 mld and a sewer network of 5,213 kms, have been sanctioned at a cost of Rs. 32,912.40 crore.
