Background

Water pollution remains one of the most serious and far-reaching environmental and public health issues in India and around the world. Policy-level public health reviews find that around 70% of surface water exhibits substantial contamination levels from organic, inorganic, and chemical contaminants. The haste of urbanization and the growth of the industrial economy outpaced the infrastructure needed to treat sewage: India discharges more than 38,000 MLD of sewage every day but treats less than 40%. The residual sewage enters the river untreated, which studies attribute to an increase in BOD, COD, and pathogen load, which are responsible for the occurrence of waterborne illnesses like diarrhea, skin rashes, malnutrition, and cancer. Statistics suggest that water pollution results in around 580 deaths each day from water-related diseases in India. 

The Sutlej River in Punjab is one of the most polluted rivers in India. A focused study undertaken in areas around Ludhiana found sections of the river, downstream of industrial and sewage discharges, had inferior quality water with Water Quality Index (WQI) values of 51 and 133. Another risk assessment showed that Sutlej water samples also included higher concentrations of heavy metals, along with high human health risk assessments.  The samples taken from the Harike wetland had BOD and COD values, which reached extremes of 105 mg/L and 265 mg/L, respectively, indicating high levels of organic pollution. On top of the high levels of organic pollution, only approximately 40% of urban sewage in the area is treated, resulting in an average BOD of 18 mg/L and poorer biodiversity with an average loss of 60%. This degraded quality of water has consequences for aquatic ecosystems, human health, and livelihoods, and reiterates the need for improved wastewater treatment systems, controls on industries, and river remediation in the Sutlej Basin.

While the issue is country-wide, it is at the local level that change can be made possible. Thus, the project “TideSong” was launched to begin addressing a serious concern whose consequences reach not only geographically vast areas, but also temporally multiple future generations.