In Kathmandu you can smell the Bagmati before you see it; in Sundarijal you can hear this river as it cascades down from its headwaters to nourish the paddy fields in the plains below the Shivapuri hills before it finds its way into the city, much abused and yet revered. …
The Ganga Action Programme is a very ambitious scheme. It aims to clean one of the world’s longest rivers using sophisticated and expensive technologies. But the project does not sufficiently recognise that the river flows through one of the poorest and the most densely populated regions of the world. Municipalities …
HERBICIDES atrazine and metolachlor, commonly used to remove weeds and pests from crop fields were until now labelled nonvolatile. It was thought that most environmental risk from these pesticides comes from surface runoff—water from rain, snowmelt and other sources that flows over the land surface. But the US Department of …
WHILE waste from drug factories continues to be a major concern for the environment, not much attention is paid to pollution that results from household consumption of drugs. Very few models exist to trace the trajectory of drugs and determine their fate. Now scientists from Autonomous University of Barcelona in …
One of your more quoted statements is that the Bagmati is dirty because there is too much money flowing in it. Bagmati is nature. She needs to be honoured and feared like nature. Feared like a teacher. She does not like money. Hindus believe when they die, they will be …
HOLDING a thermal power station in Chandrapur city in Maharashtra responsible for polluting a river, the state pollution control board has ordered forfeiture of its bank guarantee of Rs 5 lakh. Toxins released by the station killed thousands of fish in the Irai river, on whose bank it is located. …
Over a year ago, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) undertook an exercise to assess pollution levels in some of the highly polluted industrial areas of India. It then released a list of 43 most polluted areas, terming them critically polluted, and imposed a moratorium on their expansion. …
On the night of March 7, a thick pall of smoke enveloped Kudikadu village near Cuddalore. It made people ill; over 120 persons had to be hospitalised after they complained of nausea, giddiness and eye irritation. The white smoke was bromine gas and its source: pharma company Shasun Pharmaceuticals, which …
The film begins with images of a gushing stream, birds chirping and a typical audio overlay of the santoor that captures any pristine environment. It then cuts to a lament; the story of the Mithi river hard done by. The filmmakers have done well to capture the state of the …
People in the villages around Ratlam are paying a heavy price for living near the industrial town in Madhya Pradesh. Their groundwater has been polluted by over 23,500 tonnes of hazardous waste dumped at two factory premises and other sites in Ratlam. The quantity of toxic waste lying at the …
There was a time when people living along the Noyyal river in Tamil Nadu would freshen up by swimming in the river. Now goatherds chase their flock away if they go near the river. The reason is the river water has turned toxic. The dyes and salts from the industrial …
In the early 1990s, hospitals in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province, the main agricultural region of the country, started reporting an unusually high incidence of chronic renal failure. About 5,000 persons reported ill in 1993. By 2009, the disease assumed epidemic proportions. That year over 9,000 patients from North Central …
IN THE first week of April, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) oversaw an experiment to monitor, minute to minute, the water quality of the river Yamuna. The two-week trial at the water intake point of the Wazirabad water treatment plant in north-east Delhi was conducted by a private firm …
THE Delhi government plans to set up a Waterbodies Authority for proper restoration and maintenance of lakes and wetlands in the city. The proposal to bring all waterbodies under one umbrella came up at a recent review meeting of waterbodies’ restoration work. Currently, lakes and wetlands in Delhi are under …
Lavasa is a destination for the well-heeled, upwardly mobile, aspiring for quality life. The streets bear names like Thicket and Celosia (an ornamental plant); the village that the town replaces—Dasve—has become the Dasve boulevard. The town centre boasts a town hall that does not resemble any municipal office but a …
Lavasa is called a hill station but does not offer the cool comfort of one. In May and June temperatures touch nearly 40°C— not an ideal summer getaway. In nearby Mahabaleshwar, temperatures rarely cross 35°C. Then what prompted the city’s developer, Lavasa Corporation Limited (LCL), to promote it as a …
Many factors such as poverty, ineffective institutions and environmental regulations may prevent developing countries from managing how natural resources are extracted to meet a strong market demand. Extraction for some resources has reached such proportions that evidence is measurable from space. We present recent evidence of the global demand for …
OVER A century ago in 1896, British physician E Hanbury Hankin reported in the French journal Annales de l’Institut Pasteur that cholera microbes died within three hours in the Ganga water, but continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours. He had collected samples from below the bodies …
THE Madras High Court has ordered closure of more than 700 bleaching and dyeing units, and effluent treatment plants in Tirupur in Tamil Nadu. On January 28, the court also asked the state government to disconnect electricity supply to the units in the hosiery town that failed to comply with …
Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa in December announced that his government would consider banning endosulfan. The highly toxic pesticide is banned in over 70 countries. The assurance has come too late and is too little for the hundreds of people in Dakshina Kannada district, like Santosh Menzes, who are …
