Ahmedabad’s Way Out Of Water, Heat, And Other Risks: A Co-Beneficial Approach

While solutions to all of these problems aren't easy, an attitude that is co-beneficial and eco-friendly is essential to chart a way out. It would call for a holistic and functional approach towards water resource management in the city.

Asking stakeholders to look at the situation holistically, Urban Management Centre Founder and Director, Manvita Baradi told The Secretariat, "At one point, Ahmedabad had more than 200 lakes, all of them have been encroached upon. Through them, the surrounding areas were able to recharge ground water, which would then also improve the quality of water. Even pavements are supposed to be permeable."

Baradi's organisation helps local bodies’ plan and evaluate policies. 

Further, a wholesome and co-beneficial approach is not just one more way of looking at things, it is the only functional way. Ultimately, ecology will be damaged beyond repair since it is a system in which if a few parts fail, a complete collapse is not too far.  

Co-beneficial approaches also promote positive outcomes in the environment (air quality management, health, agriculture, forestry and biodiversity), energy (renewable energy, alternative fuels, and energy efficiency) and economics, as defined by United States Environmental Protection Agency's Integrated Environmental Strategies (IES) Program.

The Sabarmati And Sullying It Silly

The unaddressed river pollution and stagnation of the Sabarmati, and the hazy working of sewage treatment plants (STPs) in Ahmedabad have had a multiplier effect across the system. 

Apart from destroying the river itself, it has led to the depletion of ground water due to lack of water recharge. Those once dependent on the Sabarmati's water, now displaced, face health risks as they increasingly rely on overexploited groundwater.

This, in turn, has increased dependence on the already-scarce Narmada to meet the additional need for both industrial and domestic use.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) measures river water quality as per biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) on its "designated best use" criteria for water bodies. 

The "designated best use" refers to the highest quality standard required for a water body’s various purposes. All rivers must at least meet "bathing standards," meaning the BOD should be below 3 mg/l.

The Sabarmati falls under the Priority I category of rivers, which have BOD concentrations exceeding 30 mg/l. If the STPs had been functioning properly, the Sabarmati wouldn’t remain one of the rivers that has shown no improvement in the past five years, according to the Water Quality Management Division’s report on polluted rivers nationwide.

Originating in Rajasthan's Aravalli hills, it flows for 371 km to the southwest, joins the Gulf of Khambhat and meets the Arabian Sea. It is not a perennial river.

Currently, the stretch of the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad is sustained by water from the Narmada at Chiloda, but the riverfront development has left it a stagnant, polluted pool.

Downstream, treated sewage and industrial effluents are discharged into the Sabarmati from seven STPs and two pipelines carrying treated industrial effluents.  

Upstream, the Sabarmati is relatively clean at the Hansol portion with a BOD of 2.7 mg/l, while downstream the BOD drastically increased from 117 mg/l in 2020 to 292 mg/l in 2023, showing significant pollution.

Everywhere You See: A Borewell 

Just as Parkinson's law states that work expands to fit the time available, water usage can be viewed similarly: we believe we only consume what we need, yet we tend to use as much as we can.

Consequently, the unregulated extraction of groundwater has caused the water table to decline. With no regulation or metering to track or bill water consumption, overexploitation persists unchecked.

The Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has set the benchmark of water use at 135-150 litres per capita per day across cities in India. But a water end-use pattern study by IIT Gandhinagar, Paryavaran Bhavan and Hitotsubashi University found that an average Ahmedabad citizen consumes 282 litres per day. 

The 2023 report on the Dynamic Ground Water Resources of India reveals that of the 42,428.61 hectare meters (ham) of annual extractable groundwater resources, irrigation accounts for 32,678.1 ham, industries consume 3,350.94 ham, and domestic use stands at 1,020.99 ham.

The ratio between Annual Extractable Ground Water Resources (ham) and Ground Water Extraction (ham) in Ahmedabad Urban for all uses in the past three years has dropped. However, there has been no significant recharge in groundwater, and this is also the reason the water quality stays as it was.

"The increasing demand due to urbanisation and agriculture has led to significant over-extraction of groundwater in Ahmedabad, also causing pollution and depletion of shallow aquifers," says Dr Ashish Upadhyay, Associate Professor of Geography, Sabarmati University, Ahmedabad. 

The last available CPCB data on water quality under the National Water Quality Monitoring Programme says that out of 10 borewells tested in the Ahmedabad district, nine were found to have a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) higher than the acceptable limit for drinking water. 

That limit is 500 mg/l set by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and 300 mg/l set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Of the nine wells for which data is present, only three wells had a TDS of less than 1500 mg/l, the rest range from a minimum of 1,610 mg/l to even an astronomical 2,050 mg/l.

Apart from the unregulated discharge of industrial effluents and untreated sewage, private borewells have compounded the degradation of available freshwater. 

A Question Of Water Management

“The problem was foreseeable 20 years ago, and till date, we have no regulation,” notes Baradi. “With no regulation, anyone can dig a well and extract water, way more than their reasonable need. Moreover, whatever water we have is distributed inequitably.

"Slums and those who cannot afford canal water supply have to rely on private borewells. Unlike those who can store water, they don’t have such resources, which means their struggle to fetch water is a daily chore,” she added.

A 2018 meticulous study of Ahmedabad’s water management through a City Blueprint Approach (CBA), a systematic and standardised urban water governance assessment framework, noted, “Well-managed water resources and adequate water supply are vital to ensure sustainable economic growth and further alleviation of poverty.”

A part of the report, City Blueprint Framework (CBF), analyses water quality, solid waste treatment, water services, wastewater treatment, infrastructure, climate robustness and governance. 

Out of a maximum 10, CBF results indicate Ahmedabad's water management performance is relatively low with an overall 3.13 points. This has come about by scoring the lowest in tertiary water treatment, quality of drinking water, sewage sludge recycling, stormwater separation from sewage and drainage, green and absorbent spaces for rainwater and other natural discharges to percolate, management and action plans and public participation nearing the zero mark. 

"The few connections in the slums are often shared amongst households. Having access to a water connection therefore does not necessarily mean there is adequate access to water and sanitation," says the CBA report.

And The City’s Still Growing 

Widespread and uncontrolled building projects on the outskirts of the city are bound to put pressure on the already scarce freshwater resources in Ahmedabad.

With frequent heat waves and more borewells, the future of the city is quite stark. 

Baradi says, “Another approach is to plan and build open spaces in the city. City development plans should consider the fact that more than survivability, people need to thrive healthily. Open spaces and lakes would help rainwater and stormwater to not rush off but percolate into the ground. This is the only way we could make the most of the rainfall and also decrease TDS, by improving the groundwater quality and restricting surface water run-off during monsoon, which would prevent waterlogging.” 

“This will also reduce the Urban Heat Island effect, especially for the ones who can’t afford fixed shelters or other formalised modes of living,” she adds.  

This is no rocket science. Ahmedabad suffers from four major and visible issues: water pollution, water scarcity, heat risk and urbanisation. They are interconnected and can be dealt with together. All it needs is political will and City Development Plans that go beyond just correcting anomalies or fixing aesthetics.

 

This is the second article in a two-part series on Gujarat's water management challenges and the growing crisis of pollution, urbanisation, and resource depletion. The first part can be read here.