Cleaning of Ganga River

            Conservation and cleaning of river Ganga is a continuous and collective effort of Central Government, State Governments, Local bodies and general public.

Under Namami Gange Programme a holistic approach has been adopted to clean the river Ganga. The various types of pollution abatement schemes taken up to clean Ganga may be categorized into core and non-core schemes. Core schemes include Interception and Diversion (I&D) of sewage discharging into the Ganga and creating treatment infrastructure to treat the intercepted sewage. Non-Core schemes include providing Low Cost Sanitation (LCS) at community and individual levels at identified locations, installation of Crematoria (electric as well as wood based improved crematoria), River Front Development(RFD)  including bathing ghats, river surface cleaning, afforestation, protecting biodiversity and creating public awareness and participation. 

            Water quality monitoring of river Ganga in five states is carried out on monthly basis by respective State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs). The annual variation in water quality parameters does not indicate any sustained improvement or degradation in water quality and the long term trends only can show the improvement or degradation in water quality.

The four stretches of river Ganga where Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) levels are more than permissible limits, as monitored by CPCB, is given in table below.

In other stretches, BOD levels are within permissible limit i.e = <3mg/l. However, as per monitoring reports of CPCB, entire stretch of river Ganga has high levels of faecal coliform against the prescribed standard.