Contamination, Pollution and Quality

All of us have felt the joy of slaking one's thirst with water, washing away the unforgiving heat of a Delhi summer with a cool glass of water. But have you ever paused to think about where we get our water from? How are we using this resource? Is it finite or will be always get clean water, everyday, for all our needs?

This pollution has been caused by a paper factory that was set up 16 years ago.  The noise, air, land and water pollution that are a direct result of the factory have changed a beautiful and peaceful rural area into one where farmers’ land and crops have been destroyed, the air is full of fine, crystalline ash, the local river is an evil-smelling, stagnant mire of foam-encrusted sludge and the water table has fallen by over 70 feet.

Dear all,

IUCN, with Zoo Outreach Organisation, have today published a new report, 'The status and distribution of freshwater biodiversity in the Eastern Himalaya', which is available online here

The scarcity value of natural resources has risen due to rising pressure of human population and demands made by modern economics progress. As such managing these resources has become very important.

These Articles analyse and detail the issues of rainwater harvesting and river pollution

The three booklets discuss the issues of water quality, river pollution, and rainwater harvesting, in detail.

Organizer: National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI)

Venue: National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, India

This document deals with benchmarking local government performance on rural sanitation in Himachal Pradesh. To strengthen outcome-focused management of the rural sanitation sector in India, the Water and Sanitation Program’s (WSP) Global Scaling Up Sanitation Project, in partnership with the Government of Himachal Pradesh, developed a five-step process to monitor and benchmark performance on a monthly basis across all twelve districts in the state. Applied at the local government (district) level, this process has proven to be an effective approach, one that can improve reporting, monitoring, and performance.

The Maharashtra Groundwater (Development and Management) Bill, 2009 aims to facilitate and ensure sustainable and adequate supply of groundwater of prescribed quality, for various category of users, through supply and demand management measures, protecting public drinking water sources and to establish the State Groundwater Authority and District Level Authorities to manage and to regulate, with community participation, the exploitation of groundwater within the State of Maharashtra.

At the request of the Planning Commission, Arghyam and WaterAid agreed to co-ordinate and support a process of civil society consultation for inputs on rural and urban domestic water and sanitation for generating recommendations for the Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan of the Government of India.

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