Studies confirm poor water quality in Mumbai

Dead fish in my drinking water source

As monsoon comes, Mumbai's water supply gets contaminated. This year, too, the situation seems grim. Two recent studies have indicted Mumbai's drinking water supply. One study has found Escherichia coli (E coli) in the city's drinking water supply, while the other has traced high levels of oil and grease in a major drinking water source.

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (mcgm), in its annual water samples testing report, has said 10 samples of drinking water collected from posh Mumbai suburbs such as Colaba, Byculla and Dahisar were loaded with E coli.

The bacterium causes gastroenteritis, diarrhoea and severe kidney damage. Another 80 samples were highly contaminated with coliform bacteria and were unfit for drinking, said the report. According to the who, the level of coliform bacteria in drinking water should not be exceed 10 per 100 ml, whereas E coli should be absent.

A blame game has already begun. mcgm contends that Mumbai's water supply pipelines are almost 100 years old and leaky. Hence, during the rainy season, sewage seeps through the pipelines and contaminates drinking water with E coli. It also blames the residents' societies for not cleaning water tanks regularly. Health experts, however, differ. "Every year during monsoon, I receive a large number of patients suffering from gastroenteric problems linked chiefly to contaminated water…But residents are helpless as they cannot sue the mcgm. The Indian government has only recommended drinking water standards but not made them legally binding," says a physician based in Gorai.

In a separate incident, over 700 kg of dead fish were found floating in the Bhatsa Lake on July 10. The lake, located in Thane district, is a major source of drinking water to Mumbai.

Initially the authorities blamed it on local residents for poisoning the lake water to catch fish. But later tests by Mumbai-based Central Institute of Fisheries Education showed high levels of oil and grease effluents in the water—89 mg per litre (mg/l). The permissible limit of such contaminants in water sources is up to 10 mg/l. Local residents say the waste oil has been released by Shahpur-based Liberty Oil Mills Ltd.

mcgm has demanded action against the company and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board is investigating the matter.

NIDHI JAMWAL

SURYA SEN

Constructing Water Balance

Introduction
To understand the water regime of a specific area for water resource planning one of the first tasks is to understand the water balance of that area. Water balance is a budgeting exercise that assesses the proportion of the rainfall that becomes stream flow (or runoff), evapotranspiration, and drainage (or groundwater recharge).


Objectives of Water Balance Demonstration
1. To introduce the reader to a simple water balance model, namely, the Thorntwaite-Mather model, henceforth referred to as the T-M model (Thorntwaite et al, 1955;1957; Steenhuis et al, 1986);
2. To provide the reader with the tools to construct a water balance for her/his own region of interest, with the help of video tutorials and a sample Excel spreadsheet that can be downloaded and modified.

This document is intended for general instructive purposes for an audience that has some basic knowledge of water resources and associated terminology. No advanced expertise should be needed to understand and use this tutorial.

There can be various models to construct water balance of an area; the model that is used here for demonstration is T-M Model which has an advantage of being one of the most simple models. It can be used to determine a general estimate of the water balance regime, for individual fields to small watersheds.

Applications and Limitations : However, as in all scientific investigation, this tutorial should be used responsibly and with a full knowledge of the user's specific study area. This model and its variants have been used, for example, for irrigation scheduling of individual fields, water budgeting of small watersheds, generating actual evapotranspiration estimates for comparison with other methods - to name a few applications.

Being a lumped model, in the form described, the T-M model does not provide spatially distributed predictions, nor does it perform flow routing routines.

Composting toilets – the future of sanitation?

Ask any water supply board engineer and he will tell you that the bigger headache is sewage management and not water supply. Statistics will also show that almost all of India has access to water supply –of varying quantity and quality no doubt- but far too few have access to good sanitation.
The Millennium Development Goal adopted by the UN in September 2000 and of which India is a signatory seeks to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by 2015. That means India will have to build at least half of 115 million toilets to cover half of 78% of our rural population and 24% of its urban population un-served sanitation units by the year. A huge task indeed.
Typical sanitation solutions have included the septic tank or simply a pit latrine. Both tend to pollute ground water and are environmentally unsatisfactory. Even in water resource rich area like Goa or Kerala inadequate sanitation has ended up contaminating ground water to such an extent that many wells are unusable. Sanitation and water supply are inextricably linked. If it is not ‘fouling the nest’ it is the unavailability of water which has made many toilets unusable in rural area. If you do not have water to drink will you use it for a toilet?

On the other hand area wide underground sewerage systems with treatment facilities are difficult to provide and are costly ventures. They tend to be energy consuming and generally do not work satisfactorily. For scattered houses in outlying areas of cities, in villages, in places with a high water table and in hard rock area technically appropriate solutions are either not available or are costly to implement.
In such a scenario one emerging solution is a dry composting toilet. A composting toilet collects human waste and converts it to a fertilizer resource for plant growth without polluting water bodies or groundwater.

One such urine separating composting toilet system looks like this

An Eco-san separating pan



Tin drum for faeces and barrel for urine collection


The front portion of the pan is for the urine and the rear part with a cover is for the faeces, much like the plumbing system in human beings. After using the toilet the faeces is covered with sawdust. If toilet papers are used they are also put in the portion where the faeces go, alternately wash water can also go there. The important point is to cover the used portion completely with sawdust. The toilet is surprisingly a no smell toilet and there are no other problems of flies, gnats or insects. The urine is collected in a plastic barrel and after dilution with water in proportions of 1 to 3 or 1 to 8 can be used for plants, especially trees, where it makes a good fertilizer with its high nitrogen content.

The faeces is collected in a tin box and once the tin box is full it is replaced
with another. The full box is allowed to compost for 3 weeks and then transferred for further composting to either a large composting drum or to to an earthen pit. When covered with leaves the material composts very well in about 3 to 6 months and can be used as a soil nutrient.
Waste composting in two tin drums
below the rain water collection drum

Tippy tap’ for washing with minimum water

For washing purpose a ‘tippy tap’ – a product developed by the Centre for Applied Rural Technology, Mysore- can be used with which the wash job can be done along with hand cleaning with as less as 80 ml of water. The ‘tippy tap’ can be placed in the toilet for washing along with a saw dust container for covering the faeces.

This ecological method of sanitation consumes less than a litre of water per day for a family, converts human waste to a fertilizer resource, is clean, hygienic and functional and can be constructed almost anywhere irrespective of high water tables, hard rock below the ground or any other conditions which prevent the construction of regular toilets. By harvesting water from the rooftop of the toilet into a simple 200 litre drum all the water requirement of washing in the toilet can be met by the toilet roof itself.
Rooftop rain collected in a 200 litre drum for use in Eco-san

The urine separating WC’s are available not only in the Indian type but also in the European type. These toilets are being used in individual houses as well as flats.Eco-san alternatives are coming up in many places in the world including Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the USA, China and Sri Lanka to name a few. India too has its Eco-san heroes in Dr Bindeshwar Pathak of the Sulabh movement and Paul Calvert in Trivandrum, Kerala.

S.Vishwanath and Chitra Vishwanath
www.inika.com/chitra
www.rainwaterclub.org
For more information log on to www.rainwaterclub.org or call 080-23641690.

Overuse of ground water poses environmental threat to Asia

A recent study found underground water is being exploited faster than it can be replenished in many Asian nations. — VNS File Photo
Bali — The overuse of ground water resources is becoming a huge threat to Asian nations, warned environmental experts at a seminar in Bali, Indonesia.

Professor Brahma Chellaney, from the India-based Strategic Studies Centre for Policy Research, said underground water in Asia is being pumped to the surface at such a high rate that the ground water can not be replenished by rain.

"Over-exploitation of aquifers will affect ecosystems, and in turn accelerate global warming," said Dr Chellaney, speaking at the two-day seminar on the strategic Importance of water in Asia.

The seminar, organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAF)last week, aimed to help Asian journalists specialising in environmental issues to better understand the current water shortage in Asia and the ramifications for the future.

An example of the immediate results of ground water overuse was raised by Julian Gearing, correspondent for Asia Times in Bangkok, who said one of the reasons why pavements and sidewalks in Bangkok were sinking was overuse of aquifers.

"A majority of people in Bangkok rely on piped water and don’t

pump water from wells," said Gearing. "They are not aware of the strain being put on the aquifers largely by large and small-scale industry."

Dr Chellaney said rapid urban expansion in China’s capital Beijing, with a population of 17 million, was exhausting the local water supply.

More than two-thirds of Beijing’s water supply is now pumped from subterranean reserves.

In addition to concerns over the over-exploitation of underground water, pollution is also presenting another formidable challenge as levels of heavy metals and arsenic rise in some natural water supplies.

Agricultural pollutants, such as fertilisers and pesticides, and industrial pollutants were also seeping into ground water reserves in many areas.

Ha Noi’s sinking

The increasing use of ground water by urban households has caused severe pollution in Viet Nam’s capital city Ha Noi.

The capital’s current underground water use is about 700,000 cu.m a day and is predicted to rise two fold by 2010. It is one of the factors leading to the sinking ground in many parts of the city, according to the Ha Noi Institute for Science Technology and Construction Economics.

Participants at Bali’s seminar agreed that national governments should improve management of underground exploitation and better protect existing ground water reserves.

The seminar also agreed that Asian nations will have to solve eleven major water problems, including massive water-use by the agricultural sector, conflicts over water resources, shortages of drinking water, floods, rising demand for water in industrial use, ownership and pricing of water, pollution, river use, sanitation, underground water use and water resource threats. — VNS

Marine team sounds alarm for reefs

Fourteen scientists warn of the necessity of reducing carbon dioxide to save coral
By Helen Altonn

Recommendations to prevent what one scientist calls "osteoporosis of the reef" have been presented to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, holding its final meeting of the International Year of the Reef in Kona.
Fourteen leading climate and marine scientists and coral reef managers from the U.S. and Australia developed the "Honolulu Declaration on Ocean Acidification and Reef Management" during a workshop convened here by the Nature Conservancy two weeks ago.

Presenting the findings and recommendations to the task force at a business meeting Wednesday was Rod Salm, the conservancy's tropical marine conservation director for the Asia-Pacific area.

"The reefs of the world are at risk, and Hawaii's isolated reefs are especially vulnerable to stresses of any kind, particularly to the rapidly emerging stress brought on by climate change," he told the task force.

Suzanne Case, executive director of the conservancy in Hawaii, said: "Coral reefs are the lifeblood of our oceans, and we depend on them for survival.

"Without urgent action to limit carbon dioxide emissions and improve management of marine protected areas, even vast treasured reefs like the Great Barrier Reef and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands will become wastelands of dead coral."

The "Honolulu declaration" will be presented to the United Nations and to other national, regional and international forums to obtain commitments to address what marine scientists call "the greatest climate change threat facing coral reefs globally."

The ocean absorbs about one-third of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which combines with sea water to form carbonic acid, a process called ocean acidification. Carbonic acid erodes calcium carbonate needed by corals and other calcifying organisms to build their skeletons.

"The most important, overarching thing is to stabilize CO2 emissions," Salm said in an interview. But the scientists recognize that is "a long, convoluted political process" and that there would be a lag time even if it were accomplished because of a reservoir of atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolving in sea water, he said.

"Our goal was to work on ways we could buy time for coral reefs while CO2 levels are stabilized and eventually, hopefully, rolled back."

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to double in 50 years if current emission trends continue and "ocean acidification will continue to an extent and at rates that have not occurred for tens of millions of years," Salm said.

"Ocean acidification is creeping, progressive and insidious ... a weakening of the reef structure that makes corals more vulnerable to breakage from waves and human use."

Unlike mass coral bleaching, when corals stressed by increased temperature become white, it is difficult to detect when any coral species is threatened by acidification, he said.

"The best evidence we have suggests that when atmospheric CO2 levels reach 560 parts per million, many reefs will already have moved from net growth to net erosion." The current level is 385 parts per million, he said.

"There is hope in what came out of our workshop because we have come up with practical steps people can take that are not hugely costly and will not marginalize progress made," Salm said.

The most practical policy is to mandate that climate change actions, including those addressing rising ocean acidification, sea level and temperatures, be included in marine protected management plans, he said.

On the management side, he said, "The most obvious thing that needs to be done is to put all efforts possible into reducing as many stresses on the reef systems as we can" from people, boats, overfishing, pollution and other destructive impacts.

The less stressed corals are, the more healthy and resilient they are and better able to respond to climate changes, he said.

More science also is needed to identify less vulnerable coral reefs - those most likely to survive changing ocean conditions - so they can be protected, he said.

"I think it's very encouraging," he added. "I just hope we're able to buy time long enough to get CO2 emissions under control."

Marine team sounds alarm for reefs

Fourteen scientists warn of the necessity of reducing carbon dioxide to save coral
By Helen Altonn

Recommendations to prevent what one scientist calls "osteoporosis of the reef" have been presented to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, holding its final meeting of the International Year of the Reef in Kona.
Fourteen leading climate and marine scientists and coral reef managers from the U.S. and Australia developed the "Honolulu Declaration on Ocean Acidification and Reef Management" during a workshop convened here by the Nature Conservancy two weeks ago.

Presenting the findings and recommendations to the task force at a business meeting Wednesday was Rod Salm, the conservancy's tropical marine conservation director for the Asia-Pacific area.

"The reefs of the world are at risk, and Hawaii's isolated reefs are especially vulnerable to stresses of any kind, particularly to the rapidly emerging stress brought on by climate change," he told the task force.

Suzanne Case, executive director of the conservancy in Hawaii, said: "Coral reefs are the lifeblood of our oceans, and we depend on them for survival.

"Without urgent action to limit carbon dioxide emissions and improve management of marine protected areas, even vast treasured reefs like the Great Barrier Reef and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands will become wastelands of dead coral."

The "Honolulu declaration" will be presented to the United Nations and to other national, regional and international forums to obtain commitments to address what marine scientists call "the greatest climate change threat facing coral reefs globally."

The ocean absorbs about one-third of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which combines with sea water to form carbonic acid, a process called ocean acidification. Carbonic acid erodes calcium carbonate needed by corals and other calcifying organisms to build their skeletons.

"The most important, overarching thing is to stabilize CO2 emissions," Salm said in an interview. But the scientists recognize that is "a long, convoluted political process" and that there would be a lag time even if it were accomplished because of a reservoir of atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolving in sea water, he said.

"Our goal was to work on ways we could buy time for coral reefs while CO2 levels are stabilized and eventually, hopefully, rolled back."

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to double in 50 years if current emission trends continue and "ocean acidification will continue to an extent and at rates that have not occurred for tens of millions of years," Salm said.

"Ocean acidification is creeping, progressive and insidious ... a weakening of the reef structure that makes corals more vulnerable to breakage from waves and human use."

Unlike mass coral bleaching, when corals stressed by increased temperature become white, it is difficult to detect when any coral species is threatened by acidification, he said.

"The best evidence we have suggests that when atmospheric CO2 levels reach 560 parts per million, many reefs will already have moved from net growth to net erosion." The current level is 385 parts per million, he said.

"There is hope in what came out of our workshop because we have come up with practical steps people can take that are not hugely costly and will not marginalize progress made," Salm said.

The most practical policy is to mandate that climate change actions, including those addressing rising ocean acidification, sea level and temperatures, be included in marine protected management plans, he said.

On the management side, he said, "The most obvious thing that needs to be done is to put all efforts possible into reducing as many stresses on the reef systems as we can" from people, boats, overfishing, pollution and other destructive impacts.

The less stressed corals are, the more healthy and resilient they are and better able to respond to climate changes, he said.

More science also is needed to identify less vulnerable coral reefs - those most likely to survive changing ocean conditions - so they can be protected, he said.

"I think it's very encouraging," he added. "I just hope we're able to buy time long enough to get CO2 emissions under control."

What Flow From Dams

D. Murali

Chennai: The major outputs of a multi-purpose dam and reservoir project include hydropower, irrigated agriculture, water supply, fishing, flood control, drought prevention, and the value of recreational activities and tourism revenues. But there are also many negative direct impacts such as costs of resettlement, value of lost ecosystem, submerged cultural heritage, and reduction in fish output upstream, reminds a new book: ‘Indirect Economic Impacts of Dams: Case Studies from India, Egypt and Brazil’ edited by Ramesh Bhatia, Rita Cestti, Monica Scatasta and R.P.S. Malik (www.academicfoundation.com).

They group, under the indirect economic impacts, the inter-industry linkages (backward and forward, resulting in an increase in the demand for outputs for other sectors), and consumption-induced impacts arising from additional incomes generated by the dam project. The authors argue that accounting for these impacts is necessary for facilitating more informed decisions relating to the funding of the project and also its subsequent evaluation.

Indirect effects can be measured through estimation of multipliers, the book explains. For example, a multiplier of 1.75 shows that for every one rupee of value-add generated directly by a project at maturity, another 75 paise are generated in the form of indirect effects.

Reservoir of findings!



Agriculture, a growth engine

There are a few States in India where the procurement of agricultural products at minimum support price (MSP) is undertaken even when the market prices are higher than the MSP, while at the same time there are States where the farmers are not able to sell their produce to the procurement agencies with market prices collapsing below MSP.

How paradoxical, observes R.S. Deshpande in one of the essays included in ‘Reforming Indian Agriculture: Towards Employment Generation and Poverty Reduction,’ edited by Sankar Kumar Bhaumik (www.sagepublications.com).

The author describes three models of grain procurement. “The first model is that of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, where the procurement agencies are well set and the procurement of grains is a regular activity.” In these places, distress caused to farmers is minimum; and the farmers’ political lobby keeps the MSP moving up, says Deshpande.

“The second model is the bureaucratic circuitous route of procurement existing in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, and West Bengal.” Here, the time lag between the price collapse and actual procurement goes through a lot of circuitous procedures; so much so, the policy becomes redundant and ineffective, the author bemoans.

The third model, according to him, is what Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh follow, by selectively effecting procurement to a few regions, crops, and groups of farmers.