As part of its ‘Mahanadi River Basin Initiative’, the Water Initiatives Odisha (WIO) along with Mahanadi River Waterkeeper, RARE, Nature for All, Mahanadi Sahitya Sansad and The Ayauskam, organised a day-long consultation meet at Sonepur. The consultation was aimed at sharing the findings of a citizens’ survey of Mahanadi pollution at Sonepur and seeking cooperation of the participants in furthering a State-wide campaign, ‘Healthy Mahanadi, Happy Cities,’ that aims at linking urban people to the river so that they can love, respect and protect the river, said WIO convener Ranjan Panda.
“The voluntary campaign was launched at Sambalpur on June 29, 2013 and we are trying to cover all cities of the basin,” Panda informed. “Our survey found out that at least 5,000 people - that is near to 25 per cent of Sonepur city’s population - defecates on the banks of the river. This makes the open defecation ratio almost 1,000 people per km in the bank of the river. This is too huge considering the small size of the city,” Panda said.
The city generates at least 17, 50,000 litres of waste water on a daily basis. This added with about 11.50 metric tonne of solid waste ultimately finds its way to the river and pollute it heavily, Panda mentioned. Shyama Om Prasad Mishra of the ‘Nature for All’ said, “We have about 18 bathing ghats in which more than 5,000 people bathe daily. The drains discharge heavily polluted water into the ghats exposing the people to severe health hazards. The garbage and solid waste management of the city is also disastrous. Besides polluting the ponds of the city, they are also polluting the river heavily.”
Environmentalist Prof Arttabandhu Mishra spoke about the dying fate of river Mahanadi as a whole and urged upon the Sonepur city dwellers to start a concerted drive without further delay to save it. “Mahanadi’s capacity to dilute pollution has been chocked by Hirakud dam. The basin needs efforts to rejuvenate the feeding nullahs and rivulets and all the surface water bodies. The polluting industries need also be checked from discharging their pollutants into the river,” urged Mishra. Social worker Hara Prasad Ratha presided. The programme ended with a resolution to take a number of local actions to save Mahanadi from pollution at Sonepur.