Contamination, Pollution and Quality

This report by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE) and Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (CWRDM) on water quality monitoring in Kerala covers all its forty four river basins. This is being done under the “Environmental Monitoring Programme on Water Quality” under which samples are being collected both from surface and groundwater sources.

Groundwater sampling stations were fixed after conducting a sanitary survey in the panchayats. Water Quality Information System is being developed using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to manage the water quality from point or non-point source of pollution.

In the first phase of the project, three river basins of Kerala viz. Kabbini, Periyar and Neyyar were monitored. The network was later expanded to basins such as Chaliyar, Kadalundi, Meenachil, Karamana, Anjarakandi, Pamba, Muvattupuzha, Bharatapuzha, and Chalakudy. 

This draft report on the study of lakes by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (India) documents the physical condition of the lakes in Mumbai. Apart from the three lakes - Tulsi, Powai and Vihar that used to provide water to Mumbai residents, there are many lakes in the Bombay Municipal Corporation jurisdiction that are either polluted by human sewage or industrial effluents and have remained neglected with increasing urbanization.

There is very little to no data available on the existence of lakes of Mumbai. Several RTI’s to the government bodies also revealed that there was a lacuna in terms of the availability of the data; as a result most of the water bodies are easily exploited. Under this study the baseline data was prepared with the help of Google Earth website. The areas appearing to be lakes were marked on the Google Earth Images. These were verified by the field staff through onsite visits. The survey was conducted during September and October, 2008 and March, 2009. The study considers only the fresh water lakes which were accessible and saline water impoundments have not been considered.

This working paper by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), UNICEF and WaterAid highlights the fact that a staggering 716 million men, women and children defecate in the open every day, in South Asia, contributing to the most appalling concentration of poverty and disease and the poorest standards of hygiene in the world.

The level of nitrate in drinking water was tested from groundwater artesian wells located within farms and surrounded by crops (mostly rice and wheat rotations).

Nitrate pollution in groundwater is associated with nitrogen loads in the environment. In urban areas, it is associated with sewage and in agriculture areas, with livestock sources and nitrogen fertiliser inputs. Nitrate pollution in drinking water can have serious health impact on humans, especially for babies and children. The most significant potential health effects of drinking water contaminated with nitrate are the blue-baby syndrome (methemoglobinemia) and cancer.

This article published in the discussion section of the Economic and Political Weekly is a critique of the National Water Policy: An alternative draft for consideration, proposed by Ramaswamy Iyer, published in the Economic and Political Weekly, June 25th 2011.

This report by Asian Development Bank (ADB) deals with sanitation in India, in particular the progress, differentials, correlates, and challenges. Improved sanitation is essential to reduce ill health, child mortality, lost income associated with morbidity, and to improve environment, human dignity, and quality of life. Goal 7, target 3 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) stipulates decreasing the proportion of population without sustainable access to basic sanitation by 50 per cent in the year 2015.

This paper published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies examines the argument that the political and institutional contexts of service delivery shape people's access to the state and its resources and also the mediation between citizens and g

This report by the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank provides an account of the field level initiatives on drinking water security in India. The country faces many challenges in ensuring reliable, sustainable safe drinking water supply to rural households.

Though, in terms of provision of safe drinking water, more than 90 percent of the rural households have been covered, according to the NSSO 65th round survey 2008-09, much remains to be done to improve levels of service delivery, water quality and sustainability.

This report presents the findings of a study conducted by CPCB with the help of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and Anna University, Chennai  on the performa

Now-a-days heavy metal arsenic poses a health risk problem throughout the world. Arsenic may be found in water which has flowed through arsenic-rich rocks. Severe health effects have been observed in populations drinking arsenic-rich water over long periods in countries world-wide.