Last Friday, I attended a panel discussion on Save Ganga. It was held in Salt Lake, in the IPHE Building. Rama Rauta of Save Ganga Movement Pune, Paritosh Tyagi former Chairman CPCB, Delhi, Dr Vinod Tare IIT Kanpur, Dr Shyam Asolekat IIT Mumbai, Dr Deepa Dubey IIT Kharagpur, Dr Arunava Majumdar of JU and others were present. B.K Sengupta, President CFBL had invited me. I chaired the panel discusion on Saving the Ganga in West Bengal.
Dr Tare mentioned about the gangapedia site at http://gangapedia.iitk.ac.in/. He advocated promulgation of a law.
I talked about the tension between development and environment.
I talked about involving the citizens and municipalities and referred to our Ganga Utsav held last August.
I talked of learning from past experience, of integrating household connections with massive treatment plants and of ensuring maintenance & operation for 15 years through capitalization.
I talked of the need to allow local variations and mentioned the need for cleaning Tolly's Nullah, Kestopur Canal, Beliaghata Canal and Bagjola Canal.
I talked about the World Bank team that had come to visit the projects in Bengal the same day.
I will hold a review meeting on Wednesday 3rd October.
Any progress on the radiation treatment of sewage sludge that you mentioned in your earlier post in May?
ReplyDeletehttp://principalsecretarysblog.blogspot.in/2012/05/wastewater-treatment-using-radiation.html
Are we planning to use them in the STPs that we are planning to make in Bhatpara, Gayeshpur, Kalyani etc?
Also re-posting an earlier comment that I made in your post on Save Ganga campaign.
I had a look at NGRBA website .
http://moef.nic.in/assets/Project_NGRBA_Status_Feb2012.pdf
It seems in West bengal we are only executing construction of Ghats and River Front Development as a part of NGRBA whereas other states are building sewerage systems and STP.
I looked at KMDA website for JNNURM projects for STP and it showed that as on 30th June 2012, for the 13 ULBs of KMA, we have made a physical progress of only 4 %.
http://www.kmdaonline.org/html/phys-prog_uig.html
Sir,
ReplyDeleteAny plans on the AA-IIC community market? Sunrise Point/ Akankha/ Hiland Woods collectively have more than 500 families staying all the time and a lot more if we count weekend stays by some families.
Looking forward to a community market. Right now, we feel that we stay in the middle of a desert. everything is far away and we are solely dependent on our vehicles.
Regards,
Sowmik
I would also like to draw attention to the pollution being caused to the Bagjola Canal by the tanneries at Kolkata Leather Complex. The untreated effluents being dumped by the tanneries are all flowing into Bagjola Canal. It may be mentioned that the untreated effluents are 10 times more harmful than another other form of urban pollution.
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