River pollution has increased with the rapid growth in population in the last two decades. Untreated sewage, domestic waste and chemical detergents – all are choking the city’s Mutha river to death. About 300 million liters of untreated sewage is released into the streams and rivers every day, hundreds of trucks of construction rubble is dumped in the riverbed, solid garbage is thrown into the river, untreated industrial effluent is released into it with encroachments worsening matters. Like the other rivers, a solution to Mutha’s pollution depends on funds, serious implementation and the conscientiousness of the civic body.
The city has allowed the Mutha to be reduced to a sewer by feeding it with untreated domestic waste, industrial effluent, construction rubble and hefty amount of garbage and its citizens have turned their backs on it, experts said.
It was not so till the early 1980s when people would drink its water and swim across it, something that would guarantee a skin infection and other diseases today. In the last few years, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has woken up to the need for protecting the river and has sought funds of Rs 300 crore under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).
“My memory of the Mutha river is with fresh water flowing. A river is considered dead when it has low dissolved oxygen (DO) levels and the Mutha has it. The Mula river is only slightly better. We have continued to extract fresh water from the river and given back nothing but untreated sewage. No large-scale demand has been made by citizens to revive the rivers.The local government is manned by corporators, who are the citizens of Pune, but have not done anything to clean it up. Not a single project taken up in the last few years for the river has had any positive impact,” said river basin management expert Vijay Paranjpye.
Of the 700 million litres of sewage generated daily,about 300 million litres of untreated sewage is released into the river every day. River pollution has increased with the rapid growth in population in the last two decades. Hundreds of trucks of construction rubble are dumped in the riverbed, solid garbage is thrown into the river, untreated industrial effluent is released and then there are encroachments.
Experts warn that neglecting the rivers any further will lead to disaster. Mutha river is for Pune like Delhi’s for its Yamuna, Chennai its Cooum and Adayar, Varanasi its Ganga. The Central government has constituted the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 in 2009 as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating authority for conservation of the Ganga. The Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC) has come up with a novel proposal to clean up the stretch of Yamuna from the Wazirabad barrage to a kilometre downstream to help make the yet-to-be-built Signature bridge a tourist destination.
Restoration projects, stop feeding Mutha river with untreated industrial effluent and domestic waste, prohibiting throwing of solid garbage and stop encroachments are some of important steps that can bring back the city’s Mutha river to life.
