Water Pollution in India: Causes, Effects and Solutions

Running Head: WATER POLLUTION
WATER POLLUTION
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Background
Water pollution is seriously disturbing issue in India. Among the available water sources,
the highest percentage has been polluted by the untreated sewage that is usually drained by
factories and processing units in the South India. Though not much pronounced, some of the
pollution are usually from agricultural runoff (Chakraborty & Mukhopadhyay, 2014).
Water, the basic unit for both growth and development in animals and plants well, is
quite scarce in this subcontinent. It is for this reason that several researches have been prompted
so as to better ways of harnessing and treating it. What is worse is that even the little sources of
clean water such as the rivers, dams, water ponds are polluted from the industrial waste from
neighboring factories and processing units. For instance, more than 70% of waters in the rivers
are not drinkable because of solid and liquid wastes from the companies.
The waste from the industrials include untreated sewage, food remains, and coliforms
among others. According to the Karnataka state pollution control board, it is estimated that
about 4000 million liters of untreated sewage is drained into the rivers in the state. Of all the
sewage directed into the rivers, about 1000 million liters are treated (Damodharan, 2013).
Research to date
Untreated sewage forms the highest percentage of pollution in all the water on surface in
India. To some extent, where the soil and the rocks are porous, the untreated sewage seeps
through contaminating the underground water as well. A large disparity between the produced
sewage and the one that goes untreated. However, the issue is not the lack of treatment facilities
with a capacity to treat all the sewage that is produced, but the facilities available are never
maintained and the functional ones are not operated as required. Sewerage treatment facilities

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owned by the government are close more frequently because of issues such as the lack of reliable
power supply. In addition to unreliable power supply, other factors such as poor design or failure
due lack of maintenance also contribute to their closure. It goes without saying that absenteeism
and poor management are contributing factors as well. The waste water produced from
industries, some of it percolates into the soil, a little evaporates while most is drained into the
rivers (Gaur, 2017).
From a report released five years ago by the world health organization, out of more than
1000 towns in the south of India, there are less than three hundred sewage treatment facilities
(Khator, 2012). Less than 10% of those facilities are full waste water treatment facilities.
Ironically, all the untreated water is used downstream for drinking washing and bathing.
Interestingly, about 114 cities in south of India are dumped with untreated sewage and the bodies
that are partially cremated bodies (Greenstone & Hanna, 2011).
More than 80% of the rivers in the south of India were found to have a very high level of
BOD. Such rivers include Amlakhadi, Bweta and Markabda (Najar & Basheer, 2012). These
means that such rivers did contain close to 20 mg O/L, a level that was ecologically unsafe for
drinking. A BOD level between 1 to 8 mg O/L is clean to moderate clean water (Deshmukh,
2012).
River Ganga is the most polluted water source in south of India. Other than hiving close
to 20 mg O/L, the water source has coliform level that is greater than 104 MPN/ml. this makes
this water unsafe for both drinking and irrigation. If such water was to be used for either of the
above purposes, it is likely to cause infections and disease among animals and people.