Water quality hot-spots in rivers of India: Comments by South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, New Delhi

The Central Water Commission (CWC) has recently prepared a report on water quality scenario of our rivers and has evolved a methodology for identifying hot spots in Indian rivers. The water quality data is based on the average values observed during the last ten years (2001-2011) at 371 monitoring stations of CWC on almost all major, medium and minor rivers in India. Please find below a letter (dated November 5, 2011) from South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, New Delhi to the Chairman, Central Water Commission stating its concerns regarding the report.

To

Chairman,
Central Water Commission, New Delhi

Respected Sir,

On Oct 31, 2011, Union Ministry of Water Resources made a press release through PIB (see: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=76913) Union Water Resources Minister released the CWC report “Water Quality Hot-spots in Rivers of India” In presence of the Union Minister of state for water resources, Secretary, additional secretary and Joint Secretary, Union Water Resources Ministry (this message is copied to them all). 

However, so far the report cannot be seen on the CWC or MWR website, so firstly, can you, kindly ensure that the report is promptly put up on the Ministry website and let us know the link for the same?

Secondly, we find the report (we got a copy of the report from other sources) has some serious short comings, some of them include:

1. While you have tried to give a lot of background information, you have not listed and given on maps the specific locations of the 371 sites that you have selected and rational for selecting these sites. Can you provide these details?
2. The report does not give the date, month or period of observations. Without this specific detail, it is difficult to understand as to what specific point of time the observations pertains to. It also makes ascertaining, cross checking and comparing the observations with other time periods and other agencies impossible. 
3. Your forward to the report says, "The report is based on the average values observed during the last 10 years atCWC monitoring Stations." If indeed all of the report is based on average values (it seems so since even when the tables in the annnexures list the locations that exceed the BIS standard values, it is not stated as to at what date of how many times the locations have exceeded the prescribed limits. Without these details even these tables are of very limited use.), that the report has little value. Pl let us know if it is the average value of the locations listed in the tables have indeed crossed the prescribed values or it is some specific observations that have crossed the prescribed values, in which case, pl also report the dates on which such exceeded values have been observed. In any case, the observations are no more frequent that once a month at the maximum frequency, it should not be difficult to report such details. 
4. It is indeed surprising that in many cases, what CWC observations in this report and CWC's river water quality site (see: http://www.cwc.gov.in/main/webpages/wq_status.html which has many gaps, including the missing observations for the Cauvery and the Southern River Organisation, Lower Ganga Basin Organisation, Mahanadi and Eastern River Organisation, Narmada Basin Organisation, Yamuna basin organisation) give seem to be giving a picture too good to be true and in any case they are in contradiction with the known observations given by the other reports like that of the SPCBs, CPCB and MEF's National River Conservation Directorate. Have you tried to compare your observations with these other known observations and explain the differences? Can you please explain why these differences exist? For example, many rivers in the Ganga basin, including Yamuna, Gomati, Damodar and others are known to be highly polluted particularly close to the urban and industrial locations, as reported by the CPCB, PCBs and NRCD among others. But strangely, the only place these rivers figure in your report are in tables listing locations listing the prescribed BOD and DO. This seems clearly misleading. Similarly, in Mula Mutha rivers, the DO has been much lower than 5 mg/l and BOD much higher than 3 mg/l on many occasions, but the report does not mention this. Similarly, Many rivers like Mithi are immensely polluted, with very high BOD ( 69 mg/l), but it does not find any mention. (see: http://mpcb.gov.in/images/pdf/annualreport0405b.pdf)
5. One clear indicator of rivers with good water quality is the existence of good biodiversity, including fisheries in the river. Your report has no information about this at all. 
6. One of the major reasons for the sad state of rivers in India is that they have no freshwater as all the water in the rivers are being stored or diverted by the dams, barrages and hydropower projects, leaving no water for the downstream rivers. There is no policy or law in India that requires that water be released downstream of such locations for the various social, environmental, economic and other services that the river provides. The Central Water Commission and Ministry of Water Resources that CWC is part of has not done any effort to make this possible, even though the National Water Policy speaks about it.  You have said in the preface to the report, "Rivers are our lifeline and we all have the responsibility of preserving it, to make our development and consequently quality of life sustainable." Can you tell us what effort is CWC doing to ensure that these lifelines exist as lifelines? 
7. One would expect that such reports and the fact that CWC has been monitoring river water quality for several decades would mean that the findings of the report would be used as inputs into other aspects of CWC/ MWR work, including ensuring that rivers have freshwater flows when they give clearances to the projects. Can you tell is if this is indeed happening, if so how? 

We will look forward to your detailed response on all these points.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Himanshu Thakkar, Parineeta Dandekar

South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, 
c/o 86-D, AD block, Shalimar Bagh,
Delhi, India
himanshuthakkar@iitbombay.org, ht.sandrp@gmail.com 
www.sandrp.in 

The report of Central Water Commission can be viewed at India Water Portal here