How Safe Is Your Drinking Water in India? Be Aware of These!

Water and Air are the two primary necessities naturally available to ensure life to sustain on earth. These two natural resources are also provided with certain levels of natural automatic processes to keep them safe for all living beings on earth, including humans.

But human population growth coupled with ever expanding human activities can cause these abundant natural resources to become polluted. Pollution of air and water can cause problems to human health. Thus air and water pollution has become an important issue for all nations of the world to give much attention. Environmental protection laws have become an important aspect of modern society.

India too has been giving much attention to environmental protection. It has also enacted several environmental protection laws and constituted several authorities to safeguard its air, water and land resources from becoming unsustainable on account of various hazards, including pollution.

View of a Poorly Maintained 

Drinking Water Pumping Station in India

In India, there is  the Central Pollution Control Board at the national level and the various state pollution control boards. Environmental statutes have become so stringent in the recent years that it is not so easy for any infrastructure or industrial project to take shape without going through many so called environmental protection related statutory hurdles. The hindrances have also created allegations of corruption ruling the roost with the Indian environmental regulations, rather than them honestly implemented under a balanced system of sustainable development, for the benefit of the people at large. 

In India there also exist independent environmental activist groups and non governmental agencies who also play an important role in deciding the environmental policies of the government. The Center for Science and Environment (CSE) is one such agency. But many such activist groups and organizations become too idealistic to be practical or balanced in their outlooks and approaches. Vested interests also might cause them to work out of focus occasionally. Using environmental issues as a guise for political gains is also not uncommon.

A Poorly Maintained Indian Drinking Water Treatment Plant

For example, there have been hues and cries in India against some companies using ground water as their resource for making and marketing aerated soft drinks. The agitation in Kerala spearheaded against the Coca-Cola company's Plachimada bottling plant in Palghat is a typical case of this kind.

Problems created by pollution is also a big opportunity for big economic activities, human creativity, business and big employment generation. Unfortunately, the Indian authorities and the Indian political leaders and the common people are blissfully unaware of this and seem to ignore the potentials of using this to a win-win situation for all.

For example let me take the example of drinking water supply in India. Water supply and sanitation are the fundamental  factors that govern the progress of any society. The fundamental job of any municipality or any city corporation is to ensure the supply of safe drinking water to the house holds, take care of the waste water and to address the issue of solid wastes. In olden days, Public Health Engineering was one of the most important departments entrusted with these tasks. Unfortunately, India has blissfully ignored this over the years!

Even well educated people in India are now blissfully unaware about the methods adopted by their municipalities and city corporations in managing these activities. Their elected representatives are also any better in possessing this awareness. With the advancement of human activities, the water supply and sanitation processes and its management have become more complex, calling for a higher degree of expertise and competency. Unfortunately, this aspect has been consistently getting neglected in India for the past couple of decades.

A well maintained Indian WTP Just After Commissioning

When industrial establishments, cities, towns and homes do not have proper waste disposal systems, the waste waters discharged into the ground and to the drainage systems (as available - artificial or natural) would deplete the nature's ability to revert it back to the original quality. When the waste water or sewage load is more than the natural capacity of restoration, the natural water bodies such as ground water, streams, rivers, ponds and lakes begin to become polluted. In such a scenario our natural sources for fresh water become perennially polluted. Our old and conventional methods of making safe drinking water may not yield safe drinking water any more, unless we invest more to modify our water treatment plants and facilities. In many instances, even costly water treatment facilities fail to yield good drinking water. Besides, the waste water from the water treatment plants also would become more difficult to manage. It soon develops as a technological vicious circle with no practical solutions!

In the United States of America, they have the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) empowered by various federal statutes including the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The website of EPA provide the much needed information for the guidance of their citizens.

View of A Well Maintained 

Drinking Water Pumping Station in the USA

As against this, it would be interesting to note the various guidelines, laws, regulations and protocols that are said to be applicable in India with regard to water supply and sanitation. There are several of them and one can see them at a glance as compiled and provided in the website of the International Environmental Law Research Centre (IELRC).

The difference between what exists in the US and what exists in India is glaringly visible when you do an honest comparison. In India, there is no law that makes it mandatory for any one to ensure safe drinking water to the citizens. What exist are a set of half-cooked or impractical guidelines apparently worked out by several agencies without due understanding of the technical or practical issues involved!

Thus even the best water treatment plants in India that existed a couple of decades ago with reasonably good operation and maintenance practices are increasingly getting neglected over the years. There is a drastic reduction in the technical competence of the people who manage the existing water or waste water treatment facilities. Most water and waste water treatment facilities do not have any competent water analysts or the necessary water quality testing laboratories. What existed as some best facilities some decades ago have mostly become dilapidated or practically non-functional. The contradictory or vague or impractical guidelines and protocols have made the situation to slip from bad to the worst. Lack of awareness in the public coupled with administrative apathy has caused further damage.

One of the noteworthy examples of technical incompetence and managerial apathy in the area of waste water management resulting in a big failure was  the much fan-fared Ganga Action Plan of the government of India some years ago. Money in billions got spent without achieving the desired results and the River Ganges still remains as one of the worst polluted fresh water source for millions of people of India even now.

There is no difference in the technology or engineering of water treatment and management anywhere in the world. There is also no difference in the water testing or interpretation techniques. Water and waste water treatment technologies are also not such technologies where you need space or rocket scientists and engineers. But at the same time they also technical issues where technical expertise and experience matter a lot. In other words, any tom-dick-and-harry cannot be entrusted with the task of managing the water and waste water treatment systems. The technology and engineering involve much multi-disciplinary skills which need to be understood and addressed with due care by the authorities!

Modern water and waste water treatment requires knowledge in chemistry, hydraulics, civil engineering, chemical engineering, instrumentation and automation, toxicology, bio-chemistry, environmental laws, etc. It provides ample scope for engineers from all these fields to gain much practical experience and expertise. It also provides opportunities for employment generation and development of business.

Regrettably, India lacks the much needed technical expertise in this field in its top echelons of administrative hierarchy which is essential for formulating proper policies by the government. The mistakes of the past get repeated when attempts are repeated in the same manner as what had been done earlier! If Ganga Action Plan failed earlier, it could fail again if the authorities do not learn from the mistakes of the past. It is essential that conventional administrative procedures and systems need to be reworked with intelligent inputs from people having the necessary multidisciplinary expertise and innovative ideas in this field.

The most important aspect of making safe drinking water is to have more and more fresh raw water sources with minimal contamination as the input to the drinking water plants. Conventionally, drinking water treatment involves raw water lifting, screening, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection, storage and distribution. When the raw water becomes polluted to some degree, the conventional treatment plants no more produce safe drinking water. For example, raw water contaminated with sewage containing soaps and detergents will not fully get rid of these contaminants when treated in the conventional treatment plant. The conventional chlorination treatment might even generate carcinogens in the drinking water that is produced from such raw waters contaminated by such organic chemicals.

Unlike in the past, most water treatment facilities in India are now operated and managed by people with relatively low skills and expertise. In many places, the concerned top authorities take the installation, operation and maintenance of water treatment facilities for granted. Many plants do not have the required level of competent manpower. A good majority of them have no facilities for water quality monitoring! Plants which are erected and commissioned with full facilities get degraded and dilapidated in a few years time due to the low priorities given by the authorities.

Water treatment facilities in India used to be considered as prime installations of national importance during the initial few decades after India's independence from the British rule. The British legacy was to consider these facilities with due diligence. Even in the 1980 when I joined my professional career, water treatment and public health engineering used to be an area of prime importance to the top managements of not only the municipalities but also of the large scale industries.

But things deteriorated in later years. I do not say that this situation is worrisome everywhere in India. But, in general things have deteriorated much. Water and waste water management technologies have advanced much in the recent years in many countries. Though some progressive private sector companies in India are making advantage of such technologies to a greater extent, this is not so in the case of the government departments and public sector industries due to either lack of awareness or on account of competency vacuums that has developed in recent years.

The general deterioration of piped drinking water supply quality has caused the proliferation of bottled mineral water companies. Packed mineral water in plastic bottles and pouches are now causing serious land pollution problems due to the empty bottles and pouches. 

Health conscious and well-to-do city dwellers no more consider their piped water supply as safe. Domestic water purifiers are doing roaring business now! How safely these provide good quality water can only be guessed as there is no facility available to the users to check the quality of water!

In my opinion consumers of water need to enhance their general awareness in these areas. In the present times, even the sick people no more take their medical doctors for granted. Therefore it is a good idea to gain some knowledge about the manner in which the drinking water comes to you and also the manner in which it is finally disposed.

Those interested to get some basic ideas about water, the US-EPA site is a good educator. 

As far as India is concerned, I earnestly hope that our new government would initiate some better systems to address the various issues involved with drinking water treatment, distribution, sanitation, waste water treatment, disposal and re-use, in the days to come.

Let us hope that our democratic local governments and other such authorities responsible for providing safe drinking water to the people, take these things seriously and initiate actions for Swacch Pani (clean, safe water) in order to make the recently started Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign) a remarkable and sustainable success!

Let us also hope that our environmental authorities of the central and state levels too wake up to learn some lessons from the developed nations!

The Accursed Country of Power Production: What is the Way Out?

Today I was reading an article written by Priyadarshini Sen published recently by the Outlook Magazine as one of its national cover story. The article is titled 'Accursed County' and it deals with the negative side of the thoughtless infrastructural development that has been taking place in India in the past. 

If you have not read this article, I suggest you read it online by clicking the hyper-linked title above.

The author has painstakingly brought out the severe air, water and land pollution that apparently results from the several thermal power plants that have been in operation in and around Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh state.

This district, from techno-commercial angle, is ideal for setting up of thermal power plants. In and around there are coal mines that produce coal suitable for power generation. It has abundant source of water from Sone River and it tributary, the Rihand River and the artificial dam built across the latter creating the Gobind Ballabh Pant Sagar reservoir. More importantly, the district provided vast tracts of inexpensive land for setting up the power plants.

And this techno-commercial viability naturally attracted the public sector and private sector industrial enterprises to set up their thermal power stations in this place. Sonbhadra now produces about 11000 MW of electrical power which is about 10 % of the gross thermal power production capacity of India. It is a very good contribution to power starved India.

Those associated with the power industry and those advocates of fast track development naturally dismiss the environmental adversities as nothing serious. For every good thing, there will be some bad effects as well. They say.

But can it be dismissed that way? Shouldn't we a bit more concerned? Should we not be concerned with the poor populace of the place who are the victims (of pollution)? Shouldn't we concerned with the health problems of the people living here?

This is the issue that the author of the outlook cover story highlights. 

What are the reasons for pollution from thermal power plants? Can we not eliminate it? 

Being a technical person associated with various aspects of thermal power plant design, operation, maintenance and also its complex technicalities of environmental pollution control, I personally feel that the thermal power plant pollution effects can be mitigated to a large extent, provided the people concerned with the thermal power plant industry are a bit more technically and administratively serious with the matter.

First, let us understand the common cause for the pollution problem attributable to thermal power plants. 

Thermal power plants generate electricity by running steam turbines that drive large electric alternators commonly called generators. The steam turbines rotate at high speeds due to the energy transmitted through high pressure steam which is produced in large boilers by burning pulverized coal.

Coal which normally lies hundreds of meters below earth, contains essentially carbon and hydrocarbon compounds. The carbon and carbon compounds gives coal its calorific value or fuel value. Coal also has several mineral compounds within its complex structure which do not have any fuel value. It is generally called the coal ash.

The main constituent of coal ash is silica (silicon dioxide). It also has other mineral oxides and compounds of aluminium, magnesium and also small quantities of minerals containing mercury, phosphorous, etc. Some coal ash may also contain very small quantities of radio active minerals.

The carbon compounds of coal burns and produce heat energy and some gases such as Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, water vapor, hydrogen sulfide, etc. For aiding burning of coal, large quantities of air is required and while burning the oxygen in air is consumed and the rest gases are let out through the chimneys which contains other gaseous products of coal combustion.

The non fuel mineral content of coal does not burn. It comes out as ash particles after coal combustion. Indian coals contain large quantities of ash, as high as 45%. Every one ton of coal burnt produces nearly half a ton of ash.

Large thermal power plants use pulverized coal for efficient burning. Pulverized coal is coal which is finely powdered in coal mills which when carried with air behaves almost like a gaseous fuel.

Thus the ash which comes out of pulverized coal burning in thermal power plants is in the form of fine particles. This ash is commonly called the 'fly ash'. If left out it also gets discharged in to the atmosphere through the chimneys along with the chimney gases. A 100 MW power plant burns nearly 1000 tonnes of coal per hour. If the ash content of coal is 30% that means it has the potential to discharge 300 tonnes of ash dust to the atmosphere every hour! With that kind of a dust discharge, no one could live near a power plant!

Thermal power plants therefore use many air pollution control equipment to control the pollution caused from fly ash that could discharge out from it.  

The best fly ash arresting equipment is the electro-static precipitator or ESP. When designed and operated properly, it can remove fly ash from the chimney gases almost entirely. The fly ash removal efficiency of an ESP could be as high as 99.999%. Nevertheless, this efficiency can drop much when the ESPs are either with inferior design or operated without care or without proper maintenance.

Besides, the ESPs cannot tackle the pollution caused by gaseous pollutants like the oxides of carbon, sulphur, nitrogen etc. 

The fly ash arrested by the ESPs are either collected in dry form and could be used to make pozzolana grade cements. It can also be used to make fly ash bricks. In most power plants, the fly ash is made as a slurry using water and discharged in to a large holding reservoir called the ash pond. Normally, the ash pond is designed to hold the ash produced in a power plant for about 50 years. A filled up ash pond could be a source for raw material for making fly ash bricks. The government of India has recently made it compulsory for all builders and colonizers to use fly ash bricks for reducing the pile up of fly ash in the thermal power plant ash ponds.

Nature has an in built capacity to absorb and degrade all normal pollution caused by human activities. However, when this natural capacity is exceeded, we need to have artificial pollution control systems.

Now let us see what has created the Sonbhadra syndrome. First the ideal techno-economics have caused a concentration of power plants in this area overlooking the natural limits of the region to absorb environmental impacts. While it could have possibly withstood the impact of 2000 MW of thermal power generation, the authorities have allowed it to have 11000 MW thermal power production. This problem is not unique to Sonebhadra. Korba district of Chhattisgarh State which is another power hub of India which may also be an environmentally failed zone if not managed properly!

These areas are burning millions of tonnes of coal an hour. Imagine the oxygen depletion in these districts! Will the green forests of these areas replenish this much oxygen? Perhaps not.

The designers of the power plants ask for various input data such as the average ash content for designing their ESPs. Suppose that they had designed the plants with a maximum ash content of 30% and now the plants are getting coal with average ash content above that limit. Obviously, the power plant chimneys spew the balance fly ash to the atmosphere. Imagine the quantum of hourly tonnes of fly ash getting distributed to the atmosphere through the power plant chimneys in such a situation! In case the power plants do not get operated properly with regard to the air pollution control norms, the ambient air quality of the area deteriorates from what is stipulated as admissible by the central pollution control board. Poor ambient air quality caused by the thermal power plants enhances the level of particulate matter (PM) and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) in the ambient air. The particulates dispersed to air from power plant chimneys might contain toxic element compounds such a mercury, arsenic, phosphorous, sulphur and the like. When exposed to it for a long term, they could cause serious health hazards to people.

Improper operation and management of the power plants with regard to air, water and land pollution control methodologies adversely affect the environment around the thermal power plants. This happens due to various reasons such as production vs. pollution control priorities of the plant management, inadequate pollution control facilities and incompetence of the plant personnel in understanding pollution causes and its abatement. Of these, the latter plays a very important role.

Thermal power plants generally employ mechanical and electrical engineers for the operation and maintenance of the plants. These engineers are mostly concerned with power production and they are often pressurized to meet the production targets at any cost. The major concern for them is to get the coal, unload it, store it, pulverize it, burn it and run their turbo-generators. These are the operation and maintenance tasks of the mechanical engineers. The electrical engineers of the power station look after the electrical tie lines, the electrical switch gear and the auxiliary equipment electrics. The priorities for all of them are for maintaining the production and the plant load factor. The pollution control equipment operation and maintenance are also entrusted among this group. Pollution control equipment and systems are viewed as those creating obstructions to production and there is always a tendency for the plant personnel to give low priority for maintaining them under the best performance levels.

Thermal power plants also may have a small group of technical people who are entrusted with the water, water treatment, laboratory tests for ensuring equipment performance, quality, etc. They may also be entrusted with the task of pollution monitoring.

In a thermal power station in India, the stress is for production. The power station management personnel are often from the group of engineers associated with mechanical or electrical operations who have been conventionally trained to work hard for achieving high production targets. They are trained to ignore any thing that hampers production or any thing that causes a lowering of production.

Thus air pollution control and other pollution control or quality control aspects become pinching issues for the majority technical personnel and the top management authorities of all thermal power stations in India. With the result that they try to be dominant over all issues concerned with pollution control or quality control. This is a fact of the day.

Indian thermal power stations do not employ trained chemical engineers who have interdisciplinary technical back ground to develop as technical experts who could effectively understand and tackle the intricate technical problems of environment, water, air and the land and its linkages to the various production processes involving fuel and burner management, water management, steam generation, etc.

Some three and a half decades ago, by working in a thermal power plant as a lone chemical engineer I could experience this problem. It was a well thought experimental idea of some visionary management team of those years that could induct me to the thermal power plant. Under normal circumstances, then or now, chemical engineers are hardly inducted in thermal power plants!

In a thermal power power station, if the ESP efficiency is down by 1 % the effect could be catastrophic in the long run. On the other hand, by overlooking the ESP efficiency, the plant operation personnel might be able to enhance the production to some extent. Production and pollution control are two antagonistic agendas in the Indian industry in general.

Awareness programs and punitive initiatives under pollution control perhaps have done some impact. But what is lacking now is the technical knowledge and the expertise to tackle the environmental issues confidently. The environmentalists of India are mostly academicians and theoreticians who make hue and cries outside and not work inside to actually do some real work to eliminate pollution cost effectively! In India, there is hardly any mobility of engineers between Research and Development, academics and the industry. Either sides are maintained too water tight for that to happen.

India has grossly neglected the need for training chemical engineers who are with the basic knowledge to tackle many interdisciplinary technical issues when they are exposed and trained in the real technical fields. This has happened because, the few trained chemical engineers did not find opportunities within India to prove their expertise and develop. The Indian industry recruiters and policy makers unfortunately have little idea about the usefulness of chemical engineers. Many even do not understand the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer! For example, the thermal power industry of India with all the need for chemical engineers seldom thought about it! In India things go as per conventions and no one hardly think of changing the conventions. Changing the conventions can only be done by progressive societies and progressive people with higher intellectual capacities! India lacks such people in key leadership positions!

Now, as chemical engineering training has become almost non existent in India, it is all the more difficult for getting good chemical engineers for the various interdisciplinary tasks such as that posed by environmental pollution control and utility system engineering.

All these are essentially because of vested interest individuals with inadequate expertise who are in academics and policy planning in India. So long as expertise is something determined by the ability of a person to hoodwink the nominating authorities, this situation is not going to change in this country.

Pollution control laws and enforcement in India have been very lenient. Environmental regulations have also become a tool used by the authorities to exert their control over the industry rather than using it honestly for the benefit of the people. This results in severely polluting industries escaping from any punitive actions while new projects getting unduly delayed for environmental clearances.

It is time that we set aside self interests and move towards greater national interests. When that happens, our country would no longer have accursed counties. It will have only blessed counties! And India would indeed become 'Swachh Bharat' (Clean India) as envisaged by its visionary new PM, Shri Narendra Modi. 

India has no dearth of technical expertise to manage problems of this nature. What it really lacks is the will, honesty and administrative competence of its key functionaries holding key governmental positions!

Let us earnestly hope for positive changes in the near future!