Water pollution and river rejuvenation

Prelims and Mains

Namami Gange, launched in 2014 and run by the National Mission for Clean Ganga, is the programme to clean the Ganga: it pays for sewage treatment in the Ganga basin and for the surveys of the river's fauna.

• Its test is not the plants it builds but whether a stretch of the river stops failing the bathing water standard.
• The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) lists a river stretch as polluted when its biochemical oxygen demand stays above the bathing water standard of 3 mg a litre, and drops the stretch once it complies.
• The Board now counts 296 polluted river stretches nationally, down from 351 in 2018.
• Minimum environmental flow norms for the Ganga, notified in October 2018, are monitored by the Central Water Commission.

Prelims and Mains

Reuse of treated wastewater means sending sewage, once treated, to a farm or a factory instead of letting it into the river.

• Sewage that is treated and then let into the river uses the treatment capacity once.
• The National Framework on Safe Reuse of Treated Water, 2022, asks every State to frame its own reuse policy.
• About 14 States have reuse policies, and under a third of urban sewage was treated in 2021.

Prelims and Mains

The Jojari is a river of Rajasthan that carries Jodhpur's industrial effluent, rather than sewage, to the Luni near Balotra, as the Bandi carries Pali's.

• Effluent in the Jojari, Bandi and Luni affects about two million people in Rajasthan.
• The remedy asked of the court was distance rather than treatment.

Prelims and Mains

Hexavalent chromium, chromium (VI), is a toxic form of chromium, and around Kanpur it has reached groundwater from decades of waste dumped by factories making chromium sulphate for tanneries.