Following the invitation of Member of Parliament (Ludhiana) Mr. Manish Tewari, the Hon’ble Minister for Environment and Forests Mr. Jairam Ramesh along with officials of the Ministry of Environment and Forests including the Chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, visited the site of the Buddha Nala in Ludhiana
Punjab in September of 2010. During his visit, he was taken on an inspection of the Nala and was made aware of the debilitating and overwhelming degree to which the Nala had been polluted due to the presence of untreated waste.
Thereafter the Hon’ble Minister ordered site studies to be undertaken and a proposal for an ‘In Situ Bio-Remediation Project’ was drawn up. This revolutionary method, which has been used with great success worldwide, employs the use of microbes to eat away the waste component of effluents that are discharged into the water.
The ‘In Situ Bio-Remediation’ project will tackle the effluent load of industrial and domestic waste being emptied out into the Buddha Nala. By erecting ‘Green bridges’, i.e. temporary barricades fortified with microbial consortia, the MoEF will attempt to build filters through which the untreated waters may pass. With every successive Green Bridge that the water passes through there will be an expected reduction in what is known as ‘Bio-chemical oxygen demand’ (BoD) and ‘Chemical oxidation demand’ (CoD) levels. These Green bridges will be at set up intervals of 1 Km each or as mandated by the flow and quantum of water found in the Nala.
In effect, the microbial consortia applied in the technology will ‘chew away’ the organic load and industrial pollutants leaving behind only the clean water. The visible impact and benefit of this technology is expected to become manifest in a period of three months. The MoEF expects the BoD load to be reduced by upto 40% along with an apparent reduction of the surrounding odour.
The microbial consortia deployed in the use of this technology are harmless and indigenously found in nature. No genetically modified organisms would be used in the execution of this project. This is an environmentally benign process that has no harmful impact on the surrounding ecosystem including on human or animal health.
It may also be noted that Buddha Nala represents the largest project of this magnitude undertaken in the country. The cost of the entire project will be borne by the National River Conservation Directorate, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.
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