Future cities should minimise use of water: Experts

New Delhi, Jun 16 (UNI) Cities of future should be built in a way as to minimise the use of water so that rivers could be saved, say experts.

Giving the example of Yamuna, they said all the rivers of the country were in dire straits - thanks to what the cities were doing to them.

The experts were participating in the workshops on rivers held by the Centre for Science and Environment here.

According to them, water crisis was bound to grow in the coming years, so the rivers and the way they are used, naturally, acquire critical dimensions in this context.

The current river-cleaning paradigm, which relies almost entirely on hardware-based solutions, also indulges in a mindless game of treatment and re-treatment.

The challenge was not the treatment of waste, but how capable the cities were of reusing the treated waste.

Today Delhi and Agra were the biggest polluter of Yamuna, accounting for 90 per cent of the pollution in the river. They are followed by Agra, Ghaziabad and Faridabad.

BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand), a measure of the quality of water, load has increased 2.5 times between 1980-2005. The organic pollutants are increasing. By the time the river is midway through Delhi, the total coliform count is so high that it is difficult to count.

''There is something fundamentally wrong in the way we are managing our river cleansing programmes. We have already spent close to Rs 1,500 crore on cleaning Yamuna -- and the river has become dirtier. Our planners believe in spending money without understanding the connection between sewage and its disposal and river pollution,'' said Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) adressng the workshop.

UNI