Fast-tracking its ambitious plans to cleanse the river Ganga, the Government on Wednesday decided to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for installing and maintaining sewage treatment plants (STPs) in 188 towns and cities along the river’s banks in a time-bound manner to curb pollution.
The Government had recently assured the Supreme Court that the Ganga would be cleaned during this term of the Government and had set itself a deadline of 2018 to complete the ambitious project.
With the clock ticking, the Government may also revisit the provisions of the existing Environment Protection Act to address the issue of industrial effluents being discharged into the river. This was decided at a high-level review meeting on the Namami Gange project on Wednesday. The
Centre has allocated Rs2,037 crore for the Ganga conservation programme. The meeting was held in pursuance of the suggestion of the Prime Minister’s Office to work out time-bound action plans focusing on primary components of pollution in the Ganga, i.e., liquid waste from urban and rural areas and industrial effluent discharge.
Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Minister Uma Bharti, Drinking Water & Sanitation Minister Birender Singh, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar and Tourism and Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma and secretaries of the respective ministries attended the meeting.
The SPV to be set up by the UD Ministry will ensure that demand-supply gap in respect of sewage treatment in urban areas will be met in line with the timeframe for cleaning of the river, said a senior official from the UD Ministry.
As against the sewage treatment requirement of 3,847 million litres per day (MlD) in all the 118 cities and towns in 2015 and the estimated demand of 4,773 MlD in 2030, the present available capacity is only 879 MlD while plants with 1,263 MlD capacity are under construction. The demand and supply gap is 1,852 MlD at the current requirement and will be 2,664 MlD by 2030.
The official said that Naidu promised that all the six State Governments will be consulted and taken on board before setting up of STPs required to treat urban sewage. The entire expense of setting up the STPs would be borne by the Centre. To begin with, the focus in the first phase will be on 56 cities and towns that account for about 80 per cent of sewage generation. He further said that necessary action for setting up the SPV will be taken soon. He said that the STP capacity would be augmented to meet the 2030 demand.
The Ministers discussed action plans for treatment of sewage with timelines, rehabilitation of dysfunctional and sub-optimal STPs, plans for bridging mismatch between existing treatment capacity and the demand, capacity building of urban local bodies, modernization of existing crematoria, adoption of innovative technologies developed by BARC and IITs etc.
As a part of stakeholder consultations, a meeting of representatives of all 195 industrial units located alongside Ganga will be held next month by the Environment Ministry followed by a meeting of their municipal commissioners. State-wise consultations will be held in March, the official added.