Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
flows in India is still in its infancy. The major limitations in defining
environmental flows are: (a) lack of biological data; (b) lack of river
morphological data and sediment transport data; and (c) lack of
understanding of ecological impacts of flow alteration. 4 These should
now become areas of urgent research focus.
• In 2015, the estimated sewage generation in the country was
61,754 MLD. Data on the installed capacity of Sewage Treatment
Plants (STPs) shows that only 32.5% of the sewage generated could
potentially be treated. If only operational STPs are considered, this
further drops to 30.5%. In 41 cities, untreated sewage is being directly
discharged into rivers (see Annexure 1). Sewage Treatment Plants
need to be set up for all the cities on river banks.
At present very few cities are levying a service charge on households
for sewage treatment though charges are levied for the water supplied.
Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply & Sewerage Board (HMWSSB)
is charging a “Sewerage Cess” of 35% as part of water supply charges.
But institutions not drawing water from HMWSSB automatically pay no
sewerage cess although they generate sewage and may be discharging it
into the public sewer lines.
A realistic sewerage cess should be levied on all domestic and
commercial/industrial establishments based on the amount of water
consumed. This should apply to those connected to the municipal water
supply system as well as those using only groundwater.
Sewage Treatment Plants based on Public Private Participation are
being introduced in several cities. The sewage pipeline infrastructure
is quite old in many cities. While industries can be invited to set up the
STP to treat the sewage collected from the existing sewage network, the
government can invest in upgrading the existing old sewage pipeline
infrastructure to feed into the STPs. The STPs set up by private entities
can be spread across various locations of the city based on the city plan.
The location and size of STPs for managing city sewage will be specific to
the geography, existing sewage network and spread of the city. This can
185