Pollution in Sabarmati River: What is the truth?

River:

 

Oxford dictionary defines the river to be "A large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake, or another river". So, when the water ceases to flow, it cannot technically be a river.

 

If a river is dependent mostly on rainwater for its flow, it will cease to be a river when the rainy season is over. I have seen few such rivers in my hometown Nagpur which are reduced to nothing but a nullah once the rains are gone.  

Culprits:

 

So, what makes a river cease to be a river and become a nullah?  Major contributing factors are:

 

1. Waste (organic and inorganic) dumped into the river by humans.
2. Industrial waste dumped into the river.
3. Lack of enough water in the river to keep flowing. If there is ample water, it will dilute the waste and prevent it from becoming a complete nullah.

Looking at these factors, can we say that during most part of the year, Sabarmati river used to be reduced to nullah? Below images will help answer this question:

When the government of Gujarat started working on reviving the Sabarmati river, it was obvious that these causes of pollution will need to be fixed for river to be able to serve the people of state again. But the most important thing needed for making it a "fulltime" river was the enough supply of water to keep it flowing throughout the year. Gujarat government diverted the water from Sadar Sarovar Dam to Sabarmati to keep the river flowing. This was the first major step in cleaning up the Sabarmati river. The government also created the Sabarmati River Front Development Corporation to develop the river banks from commercial and aesthetic point of view. Below images are examples to show the success the government achieved. It is remarkable.

 

 

 

Intercept sewage water and divert it to treatment plant instead of dumping into the river.

Why discuss the Sabarmati now?

Some politically motivated guys who do not wish to bear responsibility, but believe only in firing non-sense allegations and running away without waiting for an answer, raised questions on the pollution levels of Sabarmati river. It was a politically motivated move to gain cheap attention just before the campaigning for last phase of general election was concluded.

 

Also, for some time now, old articles on websites are being circulated to mislead the people about pollution in Sabarmati. Below image shows an example of that. The article in question can be found here. The author of this article has put a note in the comments section about mysterious resurfacing of this old article. We will discuss the findings of this article in the "Facts and Figures" section.

Those responsible for circulating the old articles like the one mentioned above, went ahead and collected samples to carry out the so called analysis of water in Sabarmati to ascertain its quality. They then did a press conference to present the so called findings. The article about this press conference can be found here. They used the TDS (total dissolved solids) count to make the point that the water is badly contaminated.

 

Facts and Figures:

 

TDS is not a conclusive method to determine the quality of water. It only tells you what is the amount of dissolved solids in water. Further tests are needed to confirm what those solids are. Most often, high levels of TDS are caused by the presence of potassium, chlorides and sodium. These ions have little or no short-term effects, but toxic ions (lead arsenic, cadmium, nitrate and others) may also be dissolved in the water. So, a further assessment of dissolved solids is needed to confirm if the water is really bad.

 

I tried to search for some historical data on the pollution of Sabarmati and I found a paper published by R M Bhardwaj. It has a table showing water quality of major Indian rivers and some of their tributaries for the year 2002. I have reproduced that table below and highlighted the findings for Sabarmati. The paper can be found here.

According to this table, the TDS for Sabarmati in 2002 was roughly between 172 Mg/L to 8660 Mg/L. This has been found by converting the "Conductivity" from the table above to "TDS". What the AAP guys have reported in their press conference is that the TDS is 13400 Mg/L. It is worth noting that the water needs to be sampled at different locations and one needs to come out with a range of TDS rather than one big value that suits you.

 

Also, There are few other things we need to consider here. These are:

 

1. Population surrounding the river in 2014 is way bigger than what was there in 2002.
2. The industrialization around the river in 2002 was much lesser than what is there in 2014.

 

So, this makes the findings reported by AAP suspicious and of course, inconclusive. It also points to the fact that the efforts made by Gujarat government have been helping to keep the pollution level down. 

 

I took some more effort to compare the other factors that can be used to measure the quality of water. These are BOD and COD. They are defined below.

 

BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) - The amount of oxygen required by micro-organisms to degrade the organic matter. The BOD values depends on the dissolved organic matter in the waste water samples. More the organic matter more the demand of oxygen by microbes to degrade it.

COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) - Uses a strong chemical agent (such as potassium dichromate) to degrade both the organic as well as inorganic matter present in the samples. COD values are always higher than the BOD values. Because COD includes both biodegradable and non-biodegradable substances whereas BOD contains only bio-degradable.

 

 The article from "Sadia" that I have mentioned above, appeared in March 2012. It derives its findings from a paper for which the link is also given in her comment. This paper presents the BOD value for Sabarmati river at various points. These measures are:

There was one more paper by Nidhi Saxena, S. N. Misra and R. N. Shukla that was published in the Journal of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research. This paper contains a study of water quality of Sabarmati in 2010. These findings are as below:

The findings of these two papers are pretty much comparable and show values that are generally within the values published in 2002 report.

 

Gujarat government is also working to completely prevent the dump of sewage into the river and thus further reduce the pollution. The article about this work can be found here.

 

Conclusion: 

 

The so called study conducted by AAP on quality of water is inconclusive and does not present authentic proof of deterioration of water quality as compared to what it was in the past. These guys are more known for their "Shoot and Scoot" way of working and their claims do not deserve to be taken seriously.