When I started my water mission in India, that of providing safe water to all of India by 2020, I had a belief that I would never need to go to Kerala to provide clean drinking water. My lovely state Kerala conjured up images of plentiful clean and sparkling fresh water....I always associated Kerala with lots of greenery and fresh water...So, why would I ever need to go to clean water that was already clean and safe?
I got the first jolt in late 2006, when I went to Delhi to attend a government conference. The water secretary of all states were there and the conference was chaired by Shri Raghuvansh Prasad, the then water minister. Shanta Shiela Nair, the secretary for Department of Drinking water and supply was also present.
During this conference, I learnt that Kerala has one of the most contaminated waters in the country. And the reason was an eye opener, on how good policies if not planned and thought of properly, can have disastrous effects. It seems, the government implemented Total Sanitation Project in Kerala whereby they installed latarines in each house..However, the septic tanks were not sealed properly and the fecal water leached into the wells and acquifers..most of Kerala acquifers and groundwater became contaminated with eColi, a pathogen..what a tragedy..
Well intentioned or hair brained??? I visited Kerala last week and met Shaukat Aryadan who is Panchayat President of Nilambur, a town about 40 kms from Calicut. Shaukat among his other multi talents, is a film producer and a very energetic and committed social worker. His enthusiasm for implementing new and socially beneficial projects is phenomenal. When I asked him about the total sanitation project and the result in Kerala, I got another matter of fact answer to my long pending query. The Panchayat had just Rs. 1500 to erect a laterine and tank...That was the total sum allocated by the government. How could any panchayat erect a toilet, tank and all with Rs.1,500? Another incidence of the government not thinking through its developmental projects. A similar populist policy being providing free power to farmers resulting in unlimited pumping of water for irrigation and the resulting depletion of our ground-water across the country.
Well, during my discussions with Shaukat, I came across the most bizarre incident..and this one beats all....a certain well in Nilambur, which was used for drinking water in the past, had been converted into a septic tank..YES..A SEPTIC TANK FOR HUMAN WASTE.....God save my state...and its clean water...
For Malayalees, attached is a report by Malayala Manorama on the quality of water in Kerala...Did anyone know there was fluoride in Kerala water...or that more than 90% tap water in Kerala is contaminated...welcome to the hard facts....
Friday, May 1, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Madagascar govermnet falls due to water shortage in Korea
very interesting reading....link and content pasted below:
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13447271
THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.
Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”
Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.
Yet local shortages, caused by individual acts of mismanagement or regional problems, are one thing. A global water crisis, which impinges on supplies of food and other goods, or affects rivers and lakes everywhere, is quite another. Does the world really face a global problem?
Water, water everywhere…
Not on the face of it. There is plenty of water to go around and human beings are not using all that much. Every year, thousands of cubic kilometres (km3) of fresh water fall as rain or snow or come from melting ice. According to a study in 2007, most nations outside the Gulf were using a fifth or less of the water they receive—at least in 2000, the only year for which figures are available. The global average withdrawal of fresh water was 9% of the amount that flowed through the world’s hydrologic cycle. Both Latin America and Africa used less than 6% (see table). On this evidence, it would seem that all water problems are local.
The trouble with this conclusion is that no one knows how much water people can safely use. It is certainly not 100% (the amount taken in Gulf states) because the rest of creation also has to live off the water. In many places the maximum may well be less than one fifth, the average for Asia as a whole. It depends on how water is returned to the system, how much is taken from underground aquifers, and so on.
But there is some admittedly patchy evidence that, given current patterns of use and abuse, the amount now being withdrawn is moving dangerously close to the limit of safety—and in some places beyond it. An alarming number of the world’s great rivers no longer reach the sea. They include the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling and Yellow rivers. These are the arteries of the world’s main grain-growing areas.
Freshwater fish populations are in precipitous decline. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, fish stocks in lakes and rivers have fallen roughly 30% since 1970. This is a bigger population fall than that suffered by animals in jungles, temperate forests, savannahs and any other large ecosystem. Half the world’s wetlands, on one estimate, were drained, damaged or destroyed in the 20th century, mainly because, as the volume of fresh water in rivers falls, salt water invades the delta, changing the balance between fresh and salt water. On this evidence, there may be systemic water problems, as well as local disruptions.
Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades.
The first is demography. Over the past 50 years, as the world’s population rose from 3 billion to 6.5 billion, water use roughly trebled. On current estimates, the population is likely to rise by a further 2 billion by 2025 and by 3 billion by 2050. Demand for water will rise accordingly.
Or rather, by more. Possibly a lot more. It is not the absolute number of people that makes the biggest difference to water use but changing habits and diet. Diet matters more than any single factor because agriculture is the modern Agasthya, the mythical Indian giant who drank the seas dry. Farmers use about three-quarters of the world’s water; industry uses less than a fifth and domestic or municipal use accounts for a mere tenth.
Different foods require radically different amounts of water. To grow a kilogram of wheat requires around 1,000 litres. But it takes as much as 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of beef. The meaty diet of Americans and Europeans requires around 5,000 litres of water a day to produce. The vegetarian diets of Africa and Asia use about 2,000 litres a day (for comparison, Westerners use just 100-250 litres a day in drinking and washing).
So the shift from vegetarian diets to meaty ones—which contributed to the food-price rise of 2007-08—has big implications for water, too. In 1985 Chinese people ate, on average, 20kg of meat; this year, they will eat around 50kg. This difference translates into 390km3 (1km3 is 1 trillion litres) of water—almost as much as total water use in Europe.
The shift of diet will be impossible to reverse since it is a product of rising wealth and urbanisation. In general, “water intensity” in food increases fastest as people begin to climb out of poverty, because that is when they start eating more meat. So if living standards in the poorest countries start to rise again, water use is likely to soar. Moreover, almost all the 2 billion people who will be added to the world’s population between now and 2030 are going to be third-world city dwellers—and city people use more water than rural folk. The Food and Agriculture Organisation reckons that, without changes in efficiency, the world will need as much as 60% more water for agriculture to feed those 2 billion extra mouths. That is roughly 1,500km3 of the stuff—as much as is currently used for all purposes in the world outside Asia.
The other long-term trend affecting water is climate change. There is growing evidence that global warming is speeding up the hydrologic cycle—that is, the rate at which water evaporates and falls again as rain or snow. This higher rate seems to make wet regions more sodden, and arid ones drier. It brings longer droughts between more intense periods of rain.
Climate change has three big implications for water use. First, it changes the way plants grow. Trees, for example, react to downpours with a spurt of growth. During the longer droughts that follow, the extra biomass then dries up so that if lightning strikes, forests burn more spectacularly. Similarly crops grow too fast, then wilt.
Second, climate change increases problems of water management. Larger floods overwhelm existing controls. Reservoirs do not store enough to get people or plants through longer droughts. In addition, global warming melts glaciers and causes snow to fall as rain. Since snow and ice are natural regulators, storing water in winter and releasing it in summer, countries are swinging more violently between flood and drought. That is one big reason why dams, once a dirty word in development, have been making a comeback, especially in African countries with plenty of water but no storage capacity. The number of large dams (more than 15 metres high) has been increasing and the order books of dam builders are bulging.
Third, climate change has persuaded western governments to subsidise biofuels, which could prove as big a disaster for water as they already have been for food. At the moment, about 2% of irrigated water is used to grow crops for energy, or 44km3. But if all the national plans and policies to increase biofuels were to be implemented, reckons the UN, they would require an extra 180km3 of water. Though small compared with the increase required to feed the additional 2 billion people, the biofuels’ premium is still substantial.
In short, more water will be needed to feed and heat a world that is already showing signs of using too much. How to square that circle? The answer is by improving the efficiency with which water is used. The good news is that this is possible: vast inefficiencies exist which can be wrung out. The bad news is it will be difficult both because it will require people to change their habits and because governments, which might cajole them to make the changes, are peculiarly bad at water policy.
…nor any drop to drink
Improving efficiency is doable and industrial users have done it, cutting the amount of water needed to make each tonne of steel and each extra unit of GDP in most rich countries (see first chart). This can make a difference. The Pacific Institute reckons that, merely by using current water-saving practices (ie, no technological breakthroughs) California, a water-poor state, could meet all its needs for decades to come without using a drop more.
Still, industry consumes less than a fifth of the world’s water and the big question is how to get farmers, who use 70-80%, to follow suit. It takes at least three times as much water to grow maize in India, for example, as it does in America or China (see second chart). In some countries, you need 1,500 litres of water to produce a kilo of wheat; in others, only 750 litres. It does not necessarily follow that water is being used unsustainably in the one place and not the other; perhaps the high-usage places have plenty of water to spare. But it does suggest that better management could reduce the amount of water used in farming, and that the world could be better off if farmers did so. Changing irrigation practices can improve water efficiency by 30%, says Chandra Madramootoo, of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage. One can, for example, ensure water evaporates from the leaves of the plant, rather than from the soil. Or one can genetically modify crops so they stop growing when water runs dry, but do not die—they simply resume growth later when the rains return.
The world might also be better off, at least in terms of water, if trade patterns more closely reflected the amount of water embedded in traded goods (a concept called “virtual water” invented by Tony Allan of King’s College London). Some benign effects happen already: Mexico imports cereals from America which use 7 billion cubic metres (m3) of water. If it grew these cereals itself, it would use 16 billion m3, so trade “saves” 9 billion m3 of water. But such beneficial exchanges occur more by chance than design. Because most water use is not measured, let alone priced, trade rarely reflects water scarcities.
To make water use more efficient, says Koichiro Matsuura, the head of UNESCO, the main UN agency dealing with water, will require fundamental changes of behaviour. That means changing incentives, improving information flows, and improving the way water use is governed. All that will be hard.
Water is rarely priced in ways that reflect supply and demand. Usually, water pricing simply means that city dwellers pay for the cost of the pipes that transport it and the sewerage plants that clean it.
Basic information about who uses how much water is lacking. Rainwater and river flows can be measured with some accuracy. But the amount pumped out of lakes is a matter of guesswork and information on how much is taken from underground aquifers is almost completely lacking.
The governance of water is also a mess. Until recently, few poor countries treated it as a scarce resource, nor did they think about how it would affect their development projects. They took it for granted.
Alongside this insouciance goes a Balkanised decision-making process, with numerous overlapping authorities responsible for different watersheds, sanitation plants and irrigation. To take a small example, the modest town of Charlottesville in Virginia has 13 water authorities.
Not surprisingly, investment in water has been patchy and neglected. Aid to developing countries for water was flat in real terms between 1990 and 2005. Within that period, there was a big shift from irrigation to drinking water and sanitation—understandable no doubt, but this meant less aid was going to the main users of water, farmers in poor countries. Aid for irrigation projects in 2002-05 was less than half what it had been in 1978-81. Angel Gurría, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, talks of “a crisis in water financing”.
As is often the way, business is ahead of governments in getting to grips with waste. Big drinks companies such as Coca Cola have set themselves targets to reduce the amount of water they use in making their products (in Coke’s case, by 20% by 2012). The Nature Conservancy, an ecologically-minded NGO, is working on a certification plan which aims to give companies and businesses seals of approval (a bit like the Fairtrade symbol) according to how efficiently they use water. The plan is supposed to get going in 2010. That sort of thing is a good start, but just one step in a long process that has barely begun.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13447271
THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.
Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”
Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.
Yet local shortages, caused by individual acts of mismanagement or regional problems, are one thing. A global water crisis, which impinges on supplies of food and other goods, or affects rivers and lakes everywhere, is quite another. Does the world really face a global problem?
Water, water everywhere…
Not on the face of it. There is plenty of water to go around and human beings are not using all that much. Every year, thousands of cubic kilometres (km3) of fresh water fall as rain or snow or come from melting ice. According to a study in 2007, most nations outside the Gulf were using a fifth or less of the water they receive—at least in 2000, the only year for which figures are available. The global average withdrawal of fresh water was 9% of the amount that flowed through the world’s hydrologic cycle. Both Latin America and Africa used less than 6% (see table). On this evidence, it would seem that all water problems are local.
The trouble with this conclusion is that no one knows how much water people can safely use. It is certainly not 100% (the amount taken in Gulf states) because the rest of creation also has to live off the water. In many places the maximum may well be less than one fifth, the average for Asia as a whole. It depends on how water is returned to the system, how much is taken from underground aquifers, and so on.
But there is some admittedly patchy evidence that, given current patterns of use and abuse, the amount now being withdrawn is moving dangerously close to the limit of safety—and in some places beyond it. An alarming number of the world’s great rivers no longer reach the sea. They include the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling and Yellow rivers. These are the arteries of the world’s main grain-growing areas.
Freshwater fish populations are in precipitous decline. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, fish stocks in lakes and rivers have fallen roughly 30% since 1970. This is a bigger population fall than that suffered by animals in jungles, temperate forests, savannahs and any other large ecosystem. Half the world’s wetlands, on one estimate, were drained, damaged or destroyed in the 20th century, mainly because, as the volume of fresh water in rivers falls, salt water invades the delta, changing the balance between fresh and salt water. On this evidence, there may be systemic water problems, as well as local disruptions.
Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades.
The first is demography. Over the past 50 years, as the world’s population rose from 3 billion to 6.5 billion, water use roughly trebled. On current estimates, the population is likely to rise by a further 2 billion by 2025 and by 3 billion by 2050. Demand for water will rise accordingly.
Or rather, by more. Possibly a lot more. It is not the absolute number of people that makes the biggest difference to water use but changing habits and diet. Diet matters more than any single factor because agriculture is the modern Agasthya, the mythical Indian giant who drank the seas dry. Farmers use about three-quarters of the world’s water; industry uses less than a fifth and domestic or municipal use accounts for a mere tenth.
Different foods require radically different amounts of water. To grow a kilogram of wheat requires around 1,000 litres. But it takes as much as 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of beef. The meaty diet of Americans and Europeans requires around 5,000 litres of water a day to produce. The vegetarian diets of Africa and Asia use about 2,000 litres a day (for comparison, Westerners use just 100-250 litres a day in drinking and washing).
So the shift from vegetarian diets to meaty ones—which contributed to the food-price rise of 2007-08—has big implications for water, too. In 1985 Chinese people ate, on average, 20kg of meat; this year, they will eat around 50kg. This difference translates into 390km3 (1km3 is 1 trillion litres) of water—almost as much as total water use in Europe.
The shift of diet will be impossible to reverse since it is a product of rising wealth and urbanisation. In general, “water intensity” in food increases fastest as people begin to climb out of poverty, because that is when they start eating more meat. So if living standards in the poorest countries start to rise again, water use is likely to soar. Moreover, almost all the 2 billion people who will be added to the world’s population between now and 2030 are going to be third-world city dwellers—and city people use more water than rural folk. The Food and Agriculture Organisation reckons that, without changes in efficiency, the world will need as much as 60% more water for agriculture to feed those 2 billion extra mouths. That is roughly 1,500km3 of the stuff—as much as is currently used for all purposes in the world outside Asia.
The other long-term trend affecting water is climate change. There is growing evidence that global warming is speeding up the hydrologic cycle—that is, the rate at which water evaporates and falls again as rain or snow. This higher rate seems to make wet regions more sodden, and arid ones drier. It brings longer droughts between more intense periods of rain.
Climate change has three big implications for water use. First, it changes the way plants grow. Trees, for example, react to downpours with a spurt of growth. During the longer droughts that follow, the extra biomass then dries up so that if lightning strikes, forests burn more spectacularly. Similarly crops grow too fast, then wilt.
Second, climate change increases problems of water management. Larger floods overwhelm existing controls. Reservoirs do not store enough to get people or plants through longer droughts. In addition, global warming melts glaciers and causes snow to fall as rain. Since snow and ice are natural regulators, storing water in winter and releasing it in summer, countries are swinging more violently between flood and drought. That is one big reason why dams, once a dirty word in development, have been making a comeback, especially in African countries with plenty of water but no storage capacity. The number of large dams (more than 15 metres high) has been increasing and the order books of dam builders are bulging.
Third, climate change has persuaded western governments to subsidise biofuels, which could prove as big a disaster for water as they already have been for food. At the moment, about 2% of irrigated water is used to grow crops for energy, or 44km3. But if all the national plans and policies to increase biofuels were to be implemented, reckons the UN, they would require an extra 180km3 of water. Though small compared with the increase required to feed the additional 2 billion people, the biofuels’ premium is still substantial.
In short, more water will be needed to feed and heat a world that is already showing signs of using too much. How to square that circle? The answer is by improving the efficiency with which water is used. The good news is that this is possible: vast inefficiencies exist which can be wrung out. The bad news is it will be difficult both because it will require people to change their habits and because governments, which might cajole them to make the changes, are peculiarly bad at water policy.
…nor any drop to drink
Improving efficiency is doable and industrial users have done it, cutting the amount of water needed to make each tonne of steel and each extra unit of GDP in most rich countries (see first chart). This can make a difference. The Pacific Institute reckons that, merely by using current water-saving practices (ie, no technological breakthroughs) California, a water-poor state, could meet all its needs for decades to come without using a drop more.
Still, industry consumes less than a fifth of the world’s water and the big question is how to get farmers, who use 70-80%, to follow suit. It takes at least three times as much water to grow maize in India, for example, as it does in America or China (see second chart). In some countries, you need 1,500 litres of water to produce a kilo of wheat; in others, only 750 litres. It does not necessarily follow that water is being used unsustainably in the one place and not the other; perhaps the high-usage places have plenty of water to spare. But it does suggest that better management could reduce the amount of water used in farming, and that the world could be better off if farmers did so. Changing irrigation practices can improve water efficiency by 30%, says Chandra Madramootoo, of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage. One can, for example, ensure water evaporates from the leaves of the plant, rather than from the soil. Or one can genetically modify crops so they stop growing when water runs dry, but do not die—they simply resume growth later when the rains return.
The world might also be better off, at least in terms of water, if trade patterns more closely reflected the amount of water embedded in traded goods (a concept called “virtual water” invented by Tony Allan of King’s College London). Some benign effects happen already: Mexico imports cereals from America which use 7 billion cubic metres (m3) of water. If it grew these cereals itself, it would use 16 billion m3, so trade “saves” 9 billion m3 of water. But such beneficial exchanges occur more by chance than design. Because most water use is not measured, let alone priced, trade rarely reflects water scarcities.
To make water use more efficient, says Koichiro Matsuura, the head of UNESCO, the main UN agency dealing with water, will require fundamental changes of behaviour. That means changing incentives, improving information flows, and improving the way water use is governed. All that will be hard.
Water is rarely priced in ways that reflect supply and demand. Usually, water pricing simply means that city dwellers pay for the cost of the pipes that transport it and the sewerage plants that clean it.
Basic information about who uses how much water is lacking. Rainwater and river flows can be measured with some accuracy. But the amount pumped out of lakes is a matter of guesswork and information on how much is taken from underground aquifers is almost completely lacking.
The governance of water is also a mess. Until recently, few poor countries treated it as a scarce resource, nor did they think about how it would affect their development projects. They took it for granted.
Alongside this insouciance goes a Balkanised decision-making process, with numerous overlapping authorities responsible for different watersheds, sanitation plants and irrigation. To take a small example, the modest town of Charlottesville in Virginia has 13 water authorities.
Not surprisingly, investment in water has been patchy and neglected. Aid to developing countries for water was flat in real terms between 1990 and 2005. Within that period, there was a big shift from irrigation to drinking water and sanitation—understandable no doubt, but this meant less aid was going to the main users of water, farmers in poor countries. Aid for irrigation projects in 2002-05 was less than half what it had been in 1978-81. Angel Gurría, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, talks of “a crisis in water financing”.
As is often the way, business is ahead of governments in getting to grips with waste. Big drinks companies such as Coca Cola have set themselves targets to reduce the amount of water they use in making their products (in Coke’s case, by 20% by 2012). The Nature Conservancy, an ecologically-minded NGO, is working on a certification plan which aims to give companies and businesses seals of approval (a bit like the Fairtrade symbol) according to how efficiently they use water. The plan is supposed to get going in 2010. That sort of thing is a good start, but just one step in a long process that has barely begun.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Save Kolkata
Kolkata might have no fresh water in the next two decades...all its aquifers might turn saline...It has already started..read the link below or the pasted article beneath the link....
Pasted below as:
KOLKATA: Imagine being caught in a cyclonic storm that floods Kolkata, submerging the length and breadth of the city from Dum Dum to Tollygunge.
Giant tidal waves lashing the streets, sweeping away homes and offices, uprooting lamp posts and tossing away vehicles. If this sounds like a post-tsunami scene witnessed in Pataya five years ago, Kolkata could well be heading for a similar disaster in the next 25 years, say marine experts and conservationists. With the water level rising in the Sunderbans and the forest cover shrinking fast, Kolkata is losing the buffer that has been protecting it from natural disasters for centuries. A threat to the Sunderbans ecology
is actually a warning for the city. Unless steps are taken, the city's sub-surface acquifers and the river Hooghly could turn completely saline by 2050. A substantial part of Kolkata could also go under water in the next 40 years, said experts at the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University. Water level at the Sunderbans has been rising by 3.14 mm each year. Its impact is already being felt in Kolkata in the form of rising salinity. To make people aware of the impending danger, an NGO will launch a campaign "Save Sunderbans to Save Kolkata" in the city on Thursday. Students, conservationists and celebrities will come together for a march from the Shahid Minar to Mohar Kunja. "The idea is to sensitize Kolkatans, especially youngsters, about the need to protect the Sunderbans. Not only are we going to lose tigers and other species in the forest that are already under threat, Kolkata will get exposed to natural disasters," said Purnima Datta, secretary of the Centre for Ecological Movement (CEMO), that has organized the campaign. A smaller, erosion-hit Sunderbans could also turn Kolkata into a garbage dump, warned conservationists. The mangroves serve as a filter for the 1,100 million litre of effluents that flow into the Sunderbans from Kolkata every day. All the metallic pollutants are absorbed by the forest and the biological oxygen demand is neutralized. "We tend to ignore the fact that the Sunderbans is essential for the survival of Kolkata," said Pranabesh Sanyal, former director of Sunderban Tiger Reserve, who is now associated with the School of Environmental Studies. Environemental researcher Subir Ghosh agreed. "The rising water-level hangs over Kolkata like a Damocles' sword. It will affect the city's biodiversity, which is already under threat," he said. The forest has also been checking the upstream flow of saline water into the Hooghly and other rivers. According to the School of Oceanographic Studies, the rising salinity in the Sunderbans is fast infiltrating the Hooghly. "At this rate, the sub-surface acquifers in the city that supply our drinking water will turn totally saline in two to three decades," explained Sanyal. A documentary on the Sunderbans, depicting the ecological disaster that looms large, has been shown in several schools by CEMO. Students from 25 schools around the city will take part in the campaign, distribute leaflets on the need to conserve the Sunderbans and perform a skit.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Save Water- It wont last long
Seems my blog will be a biweekly or tri-weekly affair. But that seems fine, as neither I nor others would have the time to see it daily.
I am yet in Kolkata. Everyday, walking to and fro from my guest house, I see the picture of water gushing out of a large broken underground pipe ( See picture attached-seems the Kolkata Municipal Corporation water supply runs underneath. Ironically, in the pic. there is a rally of Trinamool Congress on the other side of the road ). Water gushes out with great force and in large capacity almost through the day and most of it is wasted- except for the taxi drivers who wash their cars or some street people who take their morning bath in the same waters. Does the municipality care- while it is unable to supply water to many places. There was report in the Sunday Times how in a place called Kulti, ladies and children have to walk for more than 3 miles to fetch water, while more water is wasted at this single place than all the water the village might require). There might be hundreds of such fountains of waste in Kolkata alone
This water wastage is not limited to the the government but to our homes as well. Without realising (or is it our who the hell cares attittude?? let others conserve water, not me??) we waste a lot more water than required. Brushing, washing of clothes and utensils with the tap open, letting water flow while having a shave or shower, using large flush tanks which wastes at least 10 litres of water every time we flush ( when only 5-6 ltrs are reqd.), leaking faucets all contribute to mammoth wastage of water. For a short moment it may seem small, but when added over the entire year and over a large population, this amount is staggering. It could provide enough water to millions and millions of people who do not have access to water. It could save millions and millions of manhours (or shall we say women or girl child hours) that could give the girl child time for studies and a decent education...give her a chance to get a same shot at life as her fortunate borther...
We do not lose a chance to blame governments and politicians and burecrats....but do we ever peep inside to see what we could do first....let us each do what we can, save even a bucket of water every day and then look outside...We need to become crusaders or water savers first- like the global warming, it is no more a choice now- it is becoming a must..the water we see will not last long...so save it....we have in our own generation seen how we have been forced to shift from natural water sources to bottled water- let us not force our children's generation to live w/o water for days..or live on ration water...we have to conserve water on a massive scale....we will preach rain water harvesting and such measures later, but can we first start with our own sweet homes??? and tell our own near and dear ones of the need to save this precious elixir..for our own self and our future generations...we owe it to them....
Pls. have a look at the below link to see the magnitude of water wastage and what little we could do...or google it yourself....
Sunday, March 22, 2009
World Water Day
Today is world water day. Got up a bit late and skipped my morning jog ( a bit relaxed being a sunday or might even go in the evening). Was missing my family a lot and the regular weekend outings with them, they being back in Hyderabd and I in Kolakta on work.
I started the Sunday Times, my favourite newspaper and the below article on page 2 headlines, stared out at me(could also serch in times of india- cities-kolkata):
In summary it covered the many children in West Bengal who are forced to drink Arsenic Contaminated Water as they have no alternate source. Arsenic is a deadly Carcinogen, and these children contract cancer, painful lesions that turn malignant and make them immobile by the time they reach 25 years resulting in eventual death by their mid-age. Pictures of people with painful cancerous lesions, children drinking contaminated water and rusted and defunct pipes and wells which stand testimony to the govt.'s half hearted attempts glared out. People are scared to marry off their daughters into these villages, due to the Arsenic curse. Arsenic is prevalant in many states in India- is there no Hope?
The irony of the fact is that the govt. and people are barking up the wrong tree(intentional???). To narrate a story, on my return from KL in 2006, I was invited by the gov. of India to a conference on Drinking Water which was also attended by Mr. Raghuvansh Prasad Yadav, the minister for rural affairs. There were lengthy debates and discussions on the problem of Arsenic in West Bengal and the stupendous work that the govt.'s arsenic task force and various university labs were conducting to remedy the problem. Crores and crores had been sunk into these projects without much impact without any significant impact on the people's lives.
Being new to the water industry, I asked the simplest of questions? Why doesnt the govt. treat the surface water (which can be very easily treated) than do all these expensive projects on treating Arsenic? It is a well known fact that Arsenic (and for that matter any chemical cotaminants like fluoride) is only present in deep underground water, but is absent in surface water like ponds, lakes, rivers etc...Having studied in Khargapur, I used to travel to my many friends in Kolkata and was only too aware that ponds and other surface water was plentiful in W.B. Without any exaggeration, all the pundits did not have a reply.....
So what is the reason? Is it that the govt. has sunk in lots and lots of money and now do not want to admit that they were all along wrong, when there was a much simpler alternative available? Or are other reasons in making excuses to spend huge sums of money??
We have started it in W.B. What is required is a behavioural change to change people's drinking water habits from Ground water to surface water..more of that later....
Saturday, March 21, 2009
I have started this blog today(22nd March,2009), after having thought of starting one for sometime now. This is to share my thoughts, my dreams, my ambitions and those of my family, friends and colleagues. To give a brief intro about myself and my family first: My name is Sudesh Menon and I lead a company in water space. I have a loving wife Preeti, a son Arul- aged 5 years and a cute darling daughter- Anjali aged 2.5 years...I will post their pics once I learn a little more about blogging. We are a very close and loving family and we dot on each other. We stay in Hyderabad in the state of Andhra Pradesh in Southern part of India. My parents stay in the picturesque state of Kerala, where we come from. I have a brother, Santhosh who stays with his wife Gunjan and lovely daughter Subha in Bangalore-the silicon valley of India.
Before going much farther, let me explain the name of the blog- "TheBlueDrink". For the last three years, I am associated with providing safe water to the underserved people in India- especially far off remote rural villages and such challenging enviornments. I made this ie: "Providing Safe water to poor people" my mission in end 2005, and returned to India from Kuala Lumpur, where I was country head for a major business division of General Electric. The story of my moving back is interesting, but I will share it later..
"TheBlueDrink" for me denotes water in its pure sparkling form- that elixir of life, without which life is unimaginable. Which immediately brings to mind, deep satifying quenching of thirst, the rivers, the sparkling beaches....but which has become so scarce and such a precious commodity for the poor people living remotely from the cities and urban places. The worth of this liquid gold is known NOT to us, living off bottled waters and clean municipal treated waters which flow thorugh a household purifier before we drink it, but by a poor mother in a remote village when she loses a child due to diarea or cholera or jaundice. The importance is known to a mother who carries her daughter, vomitting and defacating to a village clinic miles and miles away, loses all her yearly savings in medical expenses and yet loses her child. Hence the blue drink for me denotes that clean safe water that needs to made available to the millions of people in this country. And there is an intricate link between water and children- and children are very dear to me- especially after I got my two children- the love for children is all pervasive...it is the same love that each parent gives his child...so when I see a child suffering, I am reminded of my own children and my heart shudders to think, if my child were in that situation...
So, that is what my blog is about...Safe, clean water and its access to children. I would be happy, if thorugh this, I can spread awareness on this critical problem and help solve it in whatever I can...My dream is to provide safe water to all by 2020, but even if I can walk a small way forward and can some more move with me, I would have done my job..
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