Urban News

With the completion of first phase of the Hindon-cleaning project, the statistics with the MCG shows the level of Biological Oxygen Demand (measure of pollutant organic material in water), which was 45 milligram/litre (mg/l) earlier, has come down to 9.6 mg/l in January according to the records available with the pollution control board.

The Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) in Hindon was 180 mg/l earlier, and came down to 36 mg/l in January.

“According to pollution control standards, COD should be below 120 mg/l,” a senior MCG official said.

The budget for the first phase of cleaning the Hindon was Rs 1.23 crores.

Officials say the process of cleaning two kms as part of the first phase, out of a total of eight kms that falls within the jurisdiction of the civic agency, took a year. This year, the agency plans to clean up the remaining six kms.

Apart from cleaning up the river, which originates in the Shivalik valleys and covers a distance of 260 kms before merging with the Yamuna in Gautam Budh Nagar, the areas surrounding the river in Ghaziabad have also been cleaned and developed as ghats.

“The biggest challenge in the ‘Cleaning Hindon’ project was preventing people from disposing of religious items in the river. The next step was preventing washermen from using the Hindon ghats. We also had to stop people from defecating along the river banks,” City Commissioner Ajay Shanker Pandey said.

As part of the project, the commissioner directed that religious material was to be disposed in the Hawan Kund near Hindon. The civic agency put up 400 disposal units at various temples in the city. The city was divided into five zones and one vehicle was deployed to visit temples in each zone and collect material from the disposal units.

“The collected material was then dumped in Hawan Kund. This way, we have managed to prevent the dumping of 12 tonnes of religious material in the river. We have also developed pukka ghats and put up nets in the river to catch any immersed waste,” Pandey said.

The commissioner approved the building of separate washing ghats to stop people from washing clothes in the river. Toilets were also constructed in the area.

“Two task forces were formed to clean the water of plastic material and other wastes every day,” Pandey said. The second phase of cleaning has begun, he added.

For A clean hindon