Drinking water for Guwahatians

Guwahati probably holds a national, if not an international, record of being one city where the authorities have failed to provide certain basic necessities to its residents. These include drinking water, sanitation and disposal of garbage. Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Tuesday visited one of the several ongoing water supply projects in the city and took stock of the progress, during which he directed Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to commission the first phase of the project before October this year. While it is projected that Guwahati would have about 25 lakh population in the next couple of years, taking the floating population into account, the city would have at least 30 lakh people say by 2021. But then, while a good scientific drinking water supply system is one of the essential characteristics of a civilized city, the authorities have not yet been able to provide piped drinking water to even 40 per cent of Guwahati’s tax-payers. Going through the website of the Guwahati Development Department’s (GDD), one finds that the city currently has eight existing water supply projects, these being Panbazar 1 and 2, Satpukhuri 1 and 2, Pandu 1 and 2, Amingaon and Kamakhya. These eight existing plants have a total installed capacity of supplying107.85 million litres of water per day. But then these eight together are so poorly maintained that they currently have a capacity of only 72.40 million litres per day. This means the existing eight water supply plants are running only at 67 per cent of the installed capacity. The government of Assam meanwhile has taken up four major water supply projects in order to provide affordable, reliable, safe, pressurized and continuous (24x7) supply of water to the Guwahati Metropolitan Area. Of them two projects – the 191 million litres per day Kharguli project and the 37 MLD Mazgaon (North Guwahati) projects have been funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the 98 MLD Chunsali project is funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the 107 MLD Sadilapur project is funded by JNNURM. While Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) is implementing these projects through different independent project management consultant/implementation units, Guwahati Jal Board will be responsible for operation and maintenance of these facilities upon their completion. It is very encouraging that such huge projects running into several hundred crores are under various stages of completion. But then the sad part of the story is that all the four projects are lagging far behind their original target dates of completion. Though the chief minister has not mentioned as yet, it is commonsense that these projects have largely suffered due to gross inefficiency of the officials who have been entrusted with the task of ensuring that these are completed within a given time-frame. The tax-payer citizens of Guwahati have been only shown a dream of piped water supply, with the stark reality being that a large number of citizens have already spent lakhs of rupees each in installing deep tube-wells and bore-wells to draw water from below the ground. That apart, a sizeable section of citizens have been afflicted by various kinds of serious illnesses arising out of consuming groundwater that has high percentage of toxic substances like arsenic and fluoride. A few years ago, an organization called Antodaya, said to be a BJP associate, had conducted a survey in which it had found that of 120 water samples collected from various locations of the city, 21 were found to be fluoride-contaminated, and five contaminated by arsenic. While the Panjabari area was marked as heavily fluoride contaminated, Bonda and Lalganesh areas were found to be contaminated by arsenic. According to WHO, while excessive consumption of fluoride-contaminated water can lead to mild dental fluorosis or crippling skeletal fluorosis, prolonged exposure to arsenic causes cancer of the bladder, kidneys, lung and skin. It affects the central and peripheral nervous systems. It also causes birth defects and reproductive problems.