Dying rivers: Washed away by our sins

Geetika Narang walks around Connaught Place in Delhi, asking random people two simple questions: "Where do you get your water from and where does your shit go?" She is assisting Pradip Saha make a documentary: Faecal Attraction. It's on the death of the Yamuna. "My water? I guess, from Yamuna," says a slightly embarrassed middle-aged man caught by a TV camera. "And the shit?" Geetika persists. "Hmm, there only," he says, as he shies away from the question. Most others are less sure. "Hain, shit? I don't know, man, all of that happens automatically, I don't know." "Goes in the air." "Goes into water." "How do I know where it goes from the sewer?" Geetika records some of the answers and laughs over them later. But where does it really go? Most of it flows directly into our water systems — our rivers, ponds and lakes, seeping down into the groundwater. India generates a massive 38,000 million litres of sewage every day. Even for the record, the government has the capacity to treat only about 12,000 million tonnes, that's less than onethird of the muck. The 35 metropolitan cities of India alone produce 15,644 million litres of sewage daily.

In Delhi, where the government has over the decades spent the maximum amount of resources to clean the Yamuna, 40 per cent of the mess generated flows untreated into the river. The Supreme Court may have been seized of the matter for a decade but nearly half of the population in the Capital does not have a sewage system and the Delhi stretch of the Yamuna remains the most polluted river section in the country.

According to the National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS-3 ), conducted in 2005-2006 , a mere 26 per cent of rural India has sanitation. The urban sanitation coverage is 83.2 per cent and the all-India coverage is an abysmal 44.6 per cent.

So this is what we do — load water systems close by with our sewage and all sorts of pollutants and then go further out to get water. And because water in the backyard is too dirty, we either dig underground or draw it from a source far up in the hills. Water for Delhi, for instance, comes from the Ganga and Beas rivers 400 km away. It is piped all the way to fulfill the need of millions in its unending sprawl. Bangalore has to get it from the Cauvery 90 km away; Indore from the Narmada 75 km away, and Hyderabad from the Krishna 116 km away. It costs 10 times more than we pay in some cases. But someone does pay, upstream or downstream of us.

The end result: we slowly kill our rivers, literally throttle them, even as the groundwater keeps depleting at a matching pace. In the hills, we dam the rivers — drawing water for irrigation, power and direct use. Downstream, once the river hits the plains, it becomes a dumping ground. It's a double whammy for the river and a tragedy for the people who live along it.

Degrading catchment areas make it worse. With the reduction in forests and the disappearance of natural recharge zones in the mountains, less and less water seeps into the rivers. In fact, almost all Indian rivers seem to be going through these calamitous changes. Large stretches of key rivers have become so polluted that they are not even safe to bathe in. More than half the length of the Ganga is now considered unfit by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). It's the same story with the Mahanadi, with a little over 500 km of its stretch rotting. For the Godavari, it is 1,700 km, for the Narmada 480 km, and the Tapi 400 km.

Take the case of the Sutlej, in which tonnes of dead fish were recently found floating on the surface, their underskin darkened, bellies putrid. This occurrence has, shockingly, recurred in the past four years in what once used to be the lifeline of the state. Industrial pollution, clearly, has taken its toll. Punjab witnesses major aquatic mortality in the rainy season because industries store their potent and untreated water in huge pits and, under the cover of the monsoon and flash floods, release the toxic waste into the river. Skin diseases are common among people who come in contact with the water. Though yet to be proved scientifically, many also link certain forms of cancer and mental diseases to harmful chemicals seeping into the drinking water system. And if life in a river dies, can the river itself survive?

more from the Times of India

Turning on the Tap

Officials this week unveiled the latest step in a multi-organization effort to tap into the “world’s largest reservoir,” the Pacific Ocean, for drinking water that would serve residents in San Clemente, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Beach and Laguna Niguel.

The newest phase of the $150-million project is in a trailer at Doheny State Beach, but the simple structure hides a complex set of equipment that will suck water from beneath the sea floor, pump it through membranes and filters and make it ready for consumers to drink.

Water officials are launching an 18-month test phase that is critical to the future of the project.

“This phase gives us the information to design the plant correctly,” said Dick Dietmier, the director of South Coast Water District. “That’s the critical part of building the desal plant, to get the design right the first time.”

Ultimately, the system could supply up to 25 percent of San Clemente’s water needs. The city uses 10.5 million gallons of water a day. The vast majority of San Clemente’s water—85 to 90 percent—is imported from elsewhere, although the city does get about 7 percent of its supply from two local wells, and another 8 percent by recycling water.

But the amount of money the city is charged to bring in outside water has steadily climbed over the years, and the politics of water statewide has seen reductions in the amount available.

“It would be nice to have an additional local supply and become less reliant on imported water, especially with some of the challenges in the water supply in Northern California,” City Assistant Engineer David Rebensdorf said.

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Cocaine, Spices, Hormones Found in Drinking Water

How's this for a sweet surprise? A team of researchers in Washington State has found traces of cooking spices and flavorings in the waters of Puget Sound. (See map.)

University of Washington associate professor Richard Keil heads the Sound Citizen program, which investigates how what we do on land affects our waters.

Keil and his team have tracked "pulses" of food ingredients that enter the sound during certain holidays.

For instance, thyme and sage spike during Thanksgiving, cinnamon surges all winter, chocolate and vanilla show up during weekends (presumably from party-related goodies), and waffle-cone and caramel-corn remnants skyrocket around the Fourth of July.

The Puget Sound study is one of several ongoing efforts to investigate the unexpected ingredients that find their way into the global water supply.

Around the world, scientists are finding trace amounts of substances—from sugar and spice to heroin, rocket fuel, and birth control—that might be having unintended consequences for humans and wildlife alike.

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Shampoo, Cosmetics May Form Cancer-Causing Substance in Water Supplies

Your shampoo may seem harmless, but it could be contributing to the formation of a mysterious, cancer-causing substance, a new study says.

New research reveals that common household products such as shampoo can interact with disinfectants at U.S. wastewater treatment plants to form a little-studied class of cancer-causing substances. These substances, called nitrosamines, can end up in drinking water, experts say.

(Related: "Cocaine, Spices, Hormones Found in Drinking Water.")

Several nitrosamines, including the chemical NDMA, a focus of the new Yale study, are classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as probable human carcinogens.

Nitrosamines form in small amounts when exposed to chloramine, the disinfectant of choice at the nation's wastewater treatment plants. The chemical—a combination of chlorine and ammonia—has been used increasingly in drinking water disinfection since the EPA set limits for better-known toxic substances that can arise from the use of chlorine, the traditional disinfectant.

Though inconclusive, the study suggests "it's entirely possible that we're producing more problems—and maybe even worse problems—with chloramines," said David Reckhow, an environmental engineer at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who was not involved in the new study.

more from National Geographic