Lucknow’s lifeline spews dirt

LUCKNOW: Residents of Lucknow were aghast when they turned on their taps on Thursday morning. What flowed out was not the usual clean and transparent water they were used to. In some places, it was yellow and at others, dark brown. 

The reason? Lucknow’s lifeline, the Gomti, an important tributary of the Ganga, seems to be seeking retribution of the city’s thankless denizens. Rapid urbanisation and increasing pollution has turned the river into a huge ‘nullah’ (drain). Over the past 15 years, over Rs400 crores has been spent on cleaning the river. But red tape, official apathy and Lucknowites’ indifference towards the river have kept the Gomti dark and dirty.

According to a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (IITR) here, the dissolved oxygen (DO) levels in the river have plummeted dangerously. As a result, mass deaths of fish have become routine. The water is neither fit for human beings nor for aquatic life.

“People have been using it as a drain to dump all their garbage and sewage. The huge amount of untreated effluents dumped in the river by sugar mills and distilleries in neighbouring districts of Hardoi, Sitapur and Lakhimpur has damaged the river’s health almost irreparably,” says UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) chairman AK Misra.
His lament is not without reason. Lucknow dumps as much as 370 million litres of sewage into the river through 26 culverts every day. Most of this sewage is untreated as there is only one Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) which can handle only 42 MLD (million litres per day) of sewage. This STP, too, is not always functional.

According to a UPPCB report, the pollution load on the river has gone up by 20% since 1993 when the first efforts to clean the Gomti were initiated. A Rs37-crore project to set up another STP which would handle the entire city’s sewage has been hanging fire since 2003 for one reason or the other.

“If this trend continues, the day is not far when Lucknowites would thirst for each drop of potable water,” warns environment activist Ruma Sinha who has been fighting for the river’s cause for several years now. She points out that the city’s population was 16 lakh in 1993, now it has crossed 20 lakh, and the city has been expanding drastically.

“It’s ironical that nobody spared a thought for the Gomti which is the basic reason for Lucknow coming into existence,” she says.

Cleansing the Gomti, in fact, forms a major part of Phase-II of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP). But, a senior official told DNA, funds received from the Centre under this plan were diverted for paying salaries and other expenses of the UP Jal Nigam!

The only silver lining now is that UP CM Mayawati has taken up the issue in the right earnest. Her seriousness is evident from the fact that she has appointed her trusted lieutenant Satish Chandra Misra to head a committee formed to draft a time-bound plan to clean the river. On cue from the feisty CM, government agencies have already started the cleansing work on a war footing. Some NGOs have also joined the “clean Gomti” operation.

Says SR Lakha, principal secretary, urban development: “Instead of waiting for the formal plans, we have already started the basic cleaning process.” He says plans are afoot to resuscitate the dying river by linking it with the well-fed Himalayan river Sharda through a 100-km long canal. This, he says, could be a “permanent solution” to revive the Gomti.

But, as former urban development minister and local MLA Lalji Tandon says: “Gomti will become a lifeline again only when the people treat it with more respect.”
g_deepak@dnaindia.net