All across the country, India’s rivers have gone through the process of nearly dying to citizens taking notice and action to save it. Insensitive visitors who do not care much for the bigger picture have majorly polluted all rivers like the Yamuna, Cooum, Adayar and the Ganges. The Mutha river has been treated the same and has followed suit. A river, that used to be a favorite for summer time plunges and a source of drinking water, is slowly dying.
The Mutha River has changed from its plush green and blue clear health in the 1980s to a hyacinth ridden sewage canal today. Hyacinth, an indicator of pollution, is the result of the city ignoring warnings against polluting the river. Today the river is almost dead because we have allowed 300 million tons of untreated sewage, over 100 truckloads of construction rubble, solid garbage and crude industrial seepage to get into our waters.
A river dies when the levels of dissolved oxygen in the water reduces. Dissolved oxygen is oxygen that dissolves in the water by diffusion from the surrounding air, aerated water that tumbles over falls and rapids and a result of photosynthesis. Fresh water needs to have healthy levels of dissolved oxygen so that it can sustain aquatic life that cannot split oxygen from H2O. The level of dissolved oxygen decreases when fertilizers and chemicals seep into the water, this leads to the ‘overfertilization’ of water plants that increase in number and size. When it gets cloudy, respiring plants use most of the remaining dissolved oxygen. When these plants die, they are consumed by bacteria – which in turn multiply and use up vast amounts of oxygen. This is also why you see the most amount of hyacinth in the river during the monsoons.
Union Minister, Jairam Parmesh has started conversations with the residents of Pune, to figure out what can be done to better the situation. Back in September 2006 a project to rehabilitate the river was approved by the government and 99crores were granted to improve the drainage systems. Part of this project was to provide measures to prevent contamination, dredging, channelization of the riverbed, lake formation and retaining and creating walls along the banks. The latest date for finishing this project, which has barely taken off, is June 2011. Apparently, the delay is due to the non-availability of land to stack the dredged material on and a pending approval from the irrigation department.
In 2008, the PMC prepared a detailed ‘river restoration and navigation project’ which boasted of restoring and beautifying the Mutha and developing it as a water transport system to reduce pollution and traffic on the city’s roads. Nothing much has been done about it so far.
At the end of a lengthy piece of information, the question always is – so, how do we change this? Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Pre-cycle. Buy products with less packaging
- Preserve the trees in your neighborhood
- Pick up pet waste and put it in the garbage can or flush it down the toilet
- Sweep driveways, stairways and compounds clean instead of washing them down
- Turn off the water when brushing teeth and fix faulty taps to conserve water
- Use non-toxic alternatives to home cleaning chemicals
- Plant trees, shrubs and ground covers that filter pollutants. Choose plants that require little or no fertilizer
- Don’t overuse fertilizers and pesticides and don’t buy products that do so
- When you water your plants and lawn, make sure that water doesn’t wash over streets and sidewalks
- Recycle yard debris, or use it to make compost, instead of raking it into streets where it can wash into drains or burning it. Dispose of garbage carefully
- Use compost or mulch to hold moisture in the soil and control weeds
- Don’t dispose of used motor oil, paint or household chemicals on the ground or in a drain
- Don’t pour household chemicals down the sink or flush them down the toilet
In addition, ofcourse, talk about the problem. Denying it exists or affects us will leave our world in a poor state of health to become an un-environmentally friendly planet for our children.
-Apphia K.
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