366 housing societies in Gurugram to install sewage treatment plants to reduce pollution in river Yamuna
Earlier this year, GMDA conducted surprise checks and found these housing societies to be one of the reasons behind untreated sewage waste ending up in the Yamuna.
India is home to some of the most polluted rivers in India, and the Ganga and Yamuna are the most affected ones. In fact, these two rivers have become a national concern and initiatives like the million-dollar project Namami Gange has been taken up to clean them.
However, the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority, in a recent update regarding the cleaning of Yamuna, has directed 366 housing societies in Gurugram to install sewage treatment plants (STPs).
The polluted river Yamuna at Agra (Source: India Water Portal)
The decision was taken after National Green Tribunal (NGT) blamed the municipality authority for failing to curb the rising pollution levels in the river.
In a conversation with NDTV, V Uma Shankar, CEO of GMDA, said,
“The notices have been served to those private developers who promised to install separate STPs in their respective premises while taking construction licenses from the town and country planning department.”
He later adds,
“Under this provision, we have directed our officials to conduct random checking in residential societies to ascertain how many of them have not installed STPs. The officials are also checking conditions of installed STPs. As running STPs increase expenses, there are residential societies that don’t operate STPs and directly throw sewerage water in the drain.”
According to Tribune, the GMDA conducted surprise checks and found out that these 366 housing societies are one of the main reasons behind untreated sewage waste ending up in the Yamuna.
This untreated sewage would flow into the Najafgarh nullah, which eventually led to the waste reaching and polluting river Yamuna. Unfortunately, the 366 housing societies remain unidentified.
Earlier this year, in April, the NGT appointed a principal monitoring committee to review the GMDA’s performance. The evaluation resulted in the national agency stressing upon the civic authority’s failures. It asked GMDA to rectify this situation and do its bid to curb the pollution in Yamuna.
The 366 housing authorities in question now have the option to either get a complete connection to sewerage connection from GMDA or build their own STPs.
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