July 19, 2004

CLEAN WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT

Eco Friends’ First Forum for Clean Water

Be a Part of Eco Friends Activities:

Re: A Consultative Group/Advisory Committee on Urban Wastewater use and its impact on Livelihoods, Health and Environment and Ground water pollution problem in Kanpur city, July 19, 2004.

Wastewater has high potential for reuse in agriculture, an opportunity for increasing food and environmental security by avoiding direct pollution of rivers and surface water; conserving significant proportion of river basin waters, and disposing of municipal wastewater in a low-cost, sanitary way. However, untreated wastewater for irrigation poses a number of health and environmental risks at various levels. Though wastewater use in agriculture is an age-old practice, there is lack of systematic information on the subject, particularly on issues such as farmers’ needs and preferences and health and environmental risks.

In Kanpur approximately 160 MLD of domestic sewage from the city reaches Jajmau area that adds to 9 MLD of toxic tannery effluent generated from 350 odd leather factories, localized in Jajmau area. The tannery effluent is treated in two stages (36 MLD UASB plant and 36 MLD Post treatment plant). The treated effluent is then mixed with the treated sewage coming from 130 MLD plant (Activated Sludge). Finally the treated wastewater is supplied to the agricultural fields for irrigation but this system has proved to be counter- productive owing to various factors, which needs to be looked into comprehensively.

Kanpur has been a host of industries of diverse nature. The hazardous waste and toxic effluent generated by the industrial units of Kanpur have contributed significantly towards the deterioration of the environmental condition, especially the ground water resource of the town. The ground water of Jajmau, Panki, Noraiakheda and Rakhimandi have been reported to be severely contaminated with Chromium, fluorides, pesticides, alkalinity and other pollutants rendering it highly unsafe for any kind of use. Though some precautionary steps like designating the areas as unsafe or vulnerable and putting up the warning signs for not using the ground water have been taken in the past, still a lot more needs to be done to remedy the existing problems.

Eco Friends aims at sensitizing stakeholders at different levels about the negative impacts of urban wastewater use in agriculture and find out possible mitigation strategies. We also aim to highlight the problem of groundwater contamination in Kanpur and find out effective solution to the existing problem.

We need and intend to form a Consultative Group/ Advisory Committee comprising of various government representative, physicians, tannery and wastewater officials, and people like yourself from the public arena. The first meeting of the consultative group is on July 19, 2004 (2:00 PM) at CSA, Kanpur. We kindly request you to please attend the meet. If you cannot make this first meeting, Eco Friends plans on additional forums every month.

Venue of the meeting: Committee Room, Agronomy Department, CSA
Date: July 19, 2004
Time: 2:00 PM

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