Despite Cleanliness Drives, Faecal Bacteria Levels Remain High In River Ganga

The Union's state minister for Jal Shakti, Vishweshwar Tudu on February 13th informed the Parliament that the Namami Gange Program had successfully lowered the Ganga River's pollution load. He added that the Centre had started 409 projects to clean up the river since 2014, with a budget of Rs 32,912.40 crore.

Even so, alarmingly high faecal coliform levels were detected in January 2023 in at least 71% of the river's monitoring stations. Since only 59 of the 97 stations, or just 61% of the river, were tested in January by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the actual percentage is probably higher.

Faecal coliforms are bacteria found in warm-blooded animals' guts and faeces. They indicate that the water has been contaminated with human or animal waste, which gets into rivers when untreated sewage is discharged.

According to data available om Down To Earth (DTE) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, five of the ten monitored stations in Uttar Pradesh had high pollution levels. Over 66% of the 1,340 drains that empty into the Ganga and its tributaries in Uttar Pradesh discharge untreated sewage into the rivers. While all 12 tested stations in Uttarakhand had permissible levels of faecal coliform, the figures in two other states — Bihar and West Bengal — are concerning. Jharkhand had no samples collected. All 37 monitoring stations in Bihar and West Bengal had unhealthy levels of faecal coliform.

For 34 of the 42 polluted stations, the faecal coliform concentration was over 11,000 most probable numbers (MPN) per 100 milliliters, four times the allowable limit. All seven Bihar-based stations had MPN concentrations of 92,000 per 100 ml, nearly 37 times the allowable limit.

Manual samples are collected twice a month at most stations by state pollution control boards. DTE used the monthly sample with the highest contamination for the analysis. The analysis is limited to data from January 2022 and 2023.

Faecal Contamination Across States

In a series of cases involving Ganga pollution that date back to 1985, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) noted on July 22, 2022, that untreated waste was still being discharged into 60% of the Ganga. Although the five major states through which the river flows produced 10,139.3 MLD of sewage each day, even though their combined sewage treatment capacity was only 3,959.16 MLD or 40%.

Uttarakhand is the only state that has adequate treatment capacity. Hence the tribunal requested that the states submit an updated sewage treatment report. Uttar Pradesh submitted its report in December 2022, admitting that 66.8 percent of the drains that end up in the Ganga and its tributaries were operating without any treatment capacity.

Under the RTI query, the CPCB shared data for 2021, 2022, and 2023 (January). The agency identified the polluted stations for 2022 in its cover note. In January 2023, many of these were not being monitored.

A high level of faeces contamination was found in all samples from the 14 stations in West Bengal in January 2022. The state only monitored five stations in January 2023. In both years, Bihar took samples at 32 stations. Three of them had permissible faecal coliform levels in January 2022. They were contaminated a year later, too.

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