name some resources of ganga brahmaputra basin which are being misused or destroyed
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Wastewater Problems in the Ganga and Brahmaputra Basins
Apart from energy production in the mountainous areas, the citizens of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna basins are grappling with the extreme deterioration of water quality in the main streams and tributaries. This deterioration directly feeds the growing use and depletion of groundwater. From a total annual flow of 1,400 billion cubic meters (BCM) in the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna mega basin, India takes 210 BCM from groundwater and 424 BCM from surface water. As surface water is contaminated by industrial and municipal waste, residents, agriculturalists, municipalities and companies turn to groundwater for all uses. Apart from its central role in agriculture and food security, groundwater extraction is the short term answer for really serious long term issues with surface water pollution and degradation.
We have to think about wastewater problems in the context of development interests, urbanization and uses of rivers for hydroelectric power. For instance, a lot of energy is required to degrade (to "treat") wastewater pollution and in India energy supplies are allocated to industrial and urban needs long before they are distributed to sewage treatment plants. When rivers and hydrological systems are overwhelmed by the life destroying contents of industrial, agricultural and municipal wastewater, they are more costly to restore or "clean" than practices that protect water quality from contamination in the first place. Looking at the current energy scenario in India it is not hard to understand that wastewater management systems requiring high energy inputs will not be sustainable. Using activated sludge treatment and Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket technologies, wastewater treatment is an energy intensive operation. With coal blocks behind supply schedule, with gas dwindling in the KG-D6 field and with hydroelectric power barely meeting 15% of India's total needs, it is unlikely that precious power will be available to run all the existing and proposed treatment plants. Noting the recent calculations by the Center for Science and Environment, the ideal wastewater treatment plans are beyond the scope of current and near future power supplies. Even the Director of the National Mission for Clean Ganga has said that there is not enough power in India for this kind of development.
When compared to the profits generated by hydropower development, the profits from wastewater management are also less appealing. These are not monetary but quality of life benefits and they are harder to quantify than economic goods. For this reason the interest in allocating a consistent power supply to wastewater treatment facilities will remain lackluster. The profits generated by hydropower projects are more desirable than the non-profit draw on public revenues incurred by wastewater treatment. If wastewater infrastructure is built, it is done with government investment of public funds often through large international banks, and there is little private equity to drive the process. Instead the costs of building and also poorly building these facilities are absorbed across a range of human services including public health, education, housing and infrastructure. The costs of operating and maintaining sewage pumping stations and treatment plants are also high and operation and maintenance of the facilities become a low priority after the completion of construction. Generally the non-functional or deteriorating sections of all the assemblages of the wastewater management system--sewage pumping stations and treatment plants--can be hidden by the enormous pollution load. In this way functioning units of the wastewater management infrastructure that are overwhelmed by the pollution load become purposeful, projecting a façade of functional infrastructure. As facilities run periodically and below capacity or only sporadically throughout the day, untreated wastewater is passed through open drains to agricultural fields or rivers. Or en masse, wastewater is flushed off in monsoon rains and river flows. This mapping project allows the viewer to see what the current system is and where the faults and breaks in the system are located.