Gurugram seeks time to stop discharge of sewage into drains
The GMDA, on Monday, also formed a team of enforcement officers to crack down on people, who are continuing to discharge untreated sewer water in one of the three natural drains, namely Leg 1, Leg 2, and Leg 3 or Badshahpur Drain.
The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) has sought time till November this year from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to put an end to the discharge of untreated sewage into the natural drains of the city by submitting a report to the tribunal a week ago, said a GMDA official familiar with the matter.
The GMDA, on Monday, also formed a team of enforcement officers to crack down on people, who are continuing to discharge untreated sewer water in one of the three natural drains, namely Leg 1, Leg 2, and Leg 3 or Badshahpur Drain.
The NGT has been hearing two cases regarding the pollution of Yamuna — Manoj Misra vs State of Haryana, and Subhash Gupta vs Union of India — since September 2016. In 2018 September, the tribunal appointed the River Yamuna Monitoring Committee in Haryana, Delhi and UP to review the performance of the concerned authorities to stop the discharge of untreated sewer in natural drains.
Following the tribunal’s appointment of the monitoring committee, the GMDA ordered to put a stop to the discharge of untreated sewage water by offenders in the three drains by June 30.
Lalit Arora, chief engineer, GMDA, said, “We have formed an enforcement team of officials to crack down on offenders who continue to discharge their untreated sewage into the three drains. In the last five to six months, we have controlled the discharge of untreated sewage water to a great extent. However, we need four to five months more.”
The River Yamuna Monitoring Committee members, along with officials of the Haryana State Pollution Control Board and GMDA, had measured sewage discharge of the three drains on April 4.
As per the report, the discharge in Leg 1 was 12 million litres daily (MLD), 76 MLD in Leg 2 and 348 MLD in Leg 3.
Leg 3 is connected with GMDA’s sewage treatment plant at Behrampur and Dhanwapur from where 338 MLD treated sewage water is being discharged daily. The other two drains are not connected with any of the STPs. Yet these drains continuously receive untreated sewer discharge.
“We have reduced the discharge to 9 MLD from 12 MLD in Leg 1 and to 40 MLD from 76 MLD in Leg 2,” said Arora.
