World Water Day: 37,000 million litres of sewage flows into rivers daily, says report

NEW DELHI: Events around World Water Day, which is marked every year on March 22, may remind everyone about the implications of dwindling water reserves due to population pressure and pollution but the message is, somehow, lost in absence of adequate action on the ground by stakeholders.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in its recent report noted that nearly 37,000 million liters per day (MLD) of `untreated' sewage water flows into rivers across the country.

The report, submitted to the environment ministry last month, said though the sewage treatment capacity in the country was augmented over the years, the wide gap between sewage generation (57,000 MLD) and treatment capacity (20,358 MLD) kept polluting water resources ­ be it river water or groundwater.

As many as 302 river stretches on 275 rivers across the country have got polluted due to discharge of both municipal and industrial waste water over the years.

At a time when the government is focusing more on Ganga and Yamuna, the issue of polluted river stretches on other rivers appear to have been pushed to the backburner. PM Narendra Modi is expected to focus on this `gap' when he chairs a meeting of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) on March 26.