Hard facts: Groundwater once polluted is impossible to clean up easily. So, great care should be taken to protect it.
The recent report released by the Department of Mines and Geology, Government of Karnataka, on the state of groundwater quality and pollution in Bangalore city does not come as any surprise to those in the sector.
What is surprising is the complete inability to see a response apart from pointing out the technical issues such as industrial dumping into groundwater, lack of sewage management resulting in nitrate contamination and bad management of borewells resulting in iron contamination. The pollution of the lifeline groundwater in Bangalore is death by institutional and legal apathy.
Institutional framework
There is no institutional ‘owner’ or ‘manager’ of Bangalore’s or for that matter any city’s groundwater. There are only peripherally involved institutions such as the Mines and Geology Department which monitors and reports on the quantity and quality occasionally.
There is the Central Ground Water Board which also has monitoring wells and piezo-meters and tracks mostly the fluctuations in the water table and the draft.
There is the Pollution Control Board in theory responsible for the discharge of industrial effluents and hence the prevention of contamination of both surface and groundwater sources of water.
There is the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board which tracks the number of borewells in the city. And at last count it had well over 125,000 numbers from which it extracts Rs. 50 every month as sanitary cess.
There is the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike which sinks borewells of its own to provide water to the public. There are many players but no one with responsibility and accountability.