A River and its Froth

The Yamuna river presents a surreal sight these days.

From a distance it looks like a scene from one of the frozen continents where the arrival of spring has broken the grip of winter. Pure white blocks of snow and ice gently float down a river which meanders and disappears into a mist. 

There has, however, never been a snowfall in Delhi and the last bits of ice in Yamuna would have melted more than a thousand kilometres upstream, long before the river broke out of the Himalayas, on to the plains of North India. What we pretend not to see in Delhi is the effects of reckless industrial and household pollution.

It seems all that froth floating down the river comes from "excess phosphate in household and factory -use detergents and bars". Why are these pollutants not being removed at source? The answer lies in a mix of apathy and convoluted policies and rules.

The Central Pollution Control Board has set standards on the quality of effluent discharge but is unable to enforce them because there are simply not enough treatment plants. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS 4955, 4956, 8080 and 9458) specifies the minimum levels of phosphates to be included in detergents but leaves it to the industry to decide the upper limit!

While this reasoning sounds plausible it does not really add up. India is not self-sufficient in phosphates so it imports it in large quantities - especially for the fertiliser industry. According to PIB we imports nearly 5 million tonnes of rock phosphate, 2.5 million tonnes of phosphoric acid and 3 million tonnes of Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) annually.

Why would industries want to use excess phosphate when it is an expensive imported commodity? Or is the phosphate used by fertiliser manufactures different from the one used by detergent manufacturers?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/delhi-detergent-waste-chokes-yamuna-at-the-mouth-excess-phosphate-behind-deadly-froth-1191452-2018-03-17  

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/foam-covered-yamuna-delhi-pollution/

Apathy Towards Water

When we moved to NOIDA a few years ago, among the various bills we paid came one from the Jal Nigam or Water Authority. Annual charges for water supply was Rs. 1800 or just Rs. 150/month. This was a flat charge since no meters had been installed. 

This seemed rather odd especially when the other essential utility service - electricity - was carefully metered, with digital bills coming in every month based on a minimum base charge.

Thanks to this apathy towards water nobody cares about the volume of water that overflows and goes down the drain everyday. Water overflowing from the storage tanks in fact had a nuisance value only because it caused seepage from the terrace. This problem was solved, not by getting residents to install 'ball-cocks' to prevent overflows, but by fitting pipes that funneled overflowing water down into the drains. Cheap solutions for cheap resources.

The quality of the water is, of course, questionable. Despite government claims of supplying a mix of river water (Ganga 80%) and groundwater (20%), it comes so loaded with salts and impurities that every household has to either install Reverse Osmosis (RO) machines, or buy water cannisters of RO water for Rs.25 each.

Summer months in North India are characterised by squalls - dust-storms driven by sharp winds that, at times, tear through at over 120 km/hour. It uproots trees and homes, and this season, has caused over a 100 deaths in Uttar Pradesh alone. One such squall knocked out my solar-panels, and one of the water-overflow pipes on the terrace.

Curious to know how much of the overflowing water was disappearing unseen down the drains, I set a bucket under the broken pipe and did a quick calculation. Water overflowing from a set of four tanks was filling up a 15L bucket in just 3 minutes. Extrapolate this to eight sets of tanks receiving municipal supply for at least four hours everyday to 12 residential towers with eight sets of tanks each, and you have a staggering 115,200 liters of water being wasted every day. So, in just one residential colony with a mere 192 houses in Noida, is wasting no less than 42 million liters of water every year!

The optimistic or pragmatic way of looking at this rather grim situation is that barely-treated water is going down the drain to ultimately recharge groundwater aquifers. 

Yet, one cannot help worrying about amount of energy, manpower and other resources that are being deployed to supply water for bathing, washing clothes - and filling the drains of Uttar Pradesh!

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Dam Good!

One thing that strikes you as you travel to Kugti is the number of hydro-electric projects that have sprung up all over the Chamba Valley.

From the moment you leave the Punjab plains and enter Himachal Pradesh, you see power projects of assorted shapes and sizes all along the route. Many of them are the conventional, small-scale run-of-the-river projects where you have a small dam blocking the river and the resulting resorvoir being used to generate electricity. Others are a lot more complex, and the only sign of their existence is the tunnels that have been bored through the mountains, to divert waters into long pipes that feed hidden turbines.

It may not make the river look cleaner or prettier but it certainly helps the local population access one thing that makes the winter months more bearable: electricity. Thanks to projects like these, Himachal Pradesh is able to generate more than 8500MW of electricity which it is able sell to states located downstream.

Perhaps the largest player in this valley is the National Hydro Power Corp (NHPC), a central public-sector enterprise that has set up some of the largest power plants on the Ravi river, such as the Chamera-I and Chamera-II projects. Having decided to settle down for a long haul, NHPC has numerous office/staff/residential complexes all along the Chamba valley, commanding some of the best views in this district!

Private players are not too far behind. GMR and Lanco too have a growing presence here with the former represented by deep green container-box offices set up all along the road up to Holi.

Now, which are the small HEPs located along the road to Kugti? 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* NHPC -- http://www.nhpcindia.com/projects-overview.htm

- presently has an installation base of 6667 MW from 21 hydropower stations on ownership basis including projects taken up in Joint Venture.

* GMR - http://www.gmrgroup.in/energy-gmr-bajoli-power-project.aspx

- Bajoli-Holi 180MW project on Ravi - to be commissioned in 2018

* Lanco Budhil Project -- http://www.lancogroup.com/DynTestForm.aspx?PageID=29

- 70 MW plant commissioned in 2012

- Village Thalla, P.O. Ghared, Tehsil Bharmour, District Chamba 

* Hydro-Electric Power in Himachal Pradesh - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectric_power_in_Himachal_Pradesh

- 8,418 MW is harnessed so far

* Hydro Electric Projects in HP - http://india-wris.nrsc.gov.in/wrpinfo/index.php?title=Hydro_Electric_Projects_in_Himachal_Pradesh

* Himachal Pradesh Power Corp - http://www.hppcl.in/page/hydro.aspx