With nine of the 13 districts declared open defecation free (ODF) so far, authorities in the state of Uttarakhand are confident of achieving complete ODF status by May. Construction activities are proceeding in full swing in the districts of Pauri, Dehradun, Tehri and Haridwar. A little over five lakh families were found to lack toilet facilities in the state according to the baseline survey conducted in 2012. Teams have been deputed to all districts to track and verify actual toilet construction to avoid any sort of data discrepancy. Uttarakhand will be the fourth state in the country after Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala to achieve ODF status.
With the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation declaring the city of Mumbai to be free from open defecation in December 2016, certain instances are proving the claim wrong. It appears that the civic body had left out crucial portions such as the Railways and the defence land out of its ODF assessment which has led to such a wrongful interpretation of the city being open defecation free. Not just that, most slums and low-income housing clusters in localities such as Jogeshwari, Powai, Mankhurd and Chembur have also been left out of the assessment. Lack of assured water supply continues to remain one of the top reasons for the lack of toilets in many Mumbai localities.
With a bulk of the funds set aside for the Ganga clean-up remaining unspent and the project way behind schedule, officials from the National Mission for Clean Ganga claim the 2018 deadline would be impossible to meet. Large stretches of the river continue to be polluted by industrial effluent discharge and municipal sewage. An estimated three-quarter of all the untreated sewage from the Northern Plains region ends up in the Ganga. The government has also not been able to complete simpler tasks such as the Ganga river side and ghat clean up. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, however, claimed that over 75 percent of all villages along the Ganga has been declared open defecation free so far.
With over 20,000 tonnes of garbage segregated before collection, Bengaluru has become the first city in the country to achieve over 50 percent waste segregation at source. It is also the first city in the country to collect sanitary waste separately from all households. The locality of Yelahanka tops the list with 63.1 percent segregation. With ward-level micro plans in place, the city has been able to reduce the daily load on landfills by almost 1600-1800 tonnes. One of the main reasons for such a positive turnaround has been the willing participation of resident associations across the city in implementing the segregation agenda.
In a bid to reduce its mighty solid waste burden, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has decided to experiment with the novel Black Hole technology to manage garbage. Also known as super plasma decomposition, this US-patented technology employs ionized gases in low temperatures to turn garbage into ash. Dumping grounds have been reaching saturation levels and the civic body had run out of options to deal with municipal waste.
This is a roundup of important sanitation related news published between April 8 and 14, 2016.
Lead image courtesy: The Quint