Status of traditional water bodies in Meerut
Student name: Ms Diticha Deka
Guide: Dr Kamna Sachdeva
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: Council on Energy, Environment and water
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Rudresh K Sugam
Abstract: India is endowed with vast reserves of natural resources including some very diverse & distinctive hydrological units like lakes, marshes, estuaries, tidal flats, river flood plains & mangroves (MOEF, 2007). These play a major role in overall ecosystem functioning by providing services like multiple water use services, carbon sequestration, flood control, economic services, groundwater recharge etc. However these resources are under continuous & unrelenting stress, caused primarily by demographic pressure & economic growth & in the urge of fulfilling nation’s never-ending demands, these entities have been economically exploited to the extent that their capacity & potential to render various economic & environmental services have reduced drastically. While the big streams & hydrological units have always been treated as the focal points for improvement and rejuvenation, the developmental initiatives that have so far been adopted for the small & decentralised water bodies is definitely insufficient. These water bodies have degenerated over time due to sedimentation, encroachment, inefficient regulatory structure, disappreance of traditional community governance and lack of operational and maintenance interventions. To have a better understanding of the status of these most disdained & disregarded entities, a field work was carried out in Meerut District of Uttar Pradesh wherein a total of 120 ponds were mapped & sampled. The ponds were tested for nine water quality parameters namely, Temperature, Hardness, pH, Turbidity, Chloride, Nitrate, Phosphorus, Dissolved Oxygen and Fecal Coliform. The values obtained for temperature, pH, hardness & chloride ranged between 18-25°C, 7-10, 88-616 mg/l & 56-723 mg/l. For turbidity, phosphorus and Dissolved Oxygen about 54%, 64%, & 58% of ponds recorded values that were above the permissible limits. The values obtained for all these parameters clearly pointed towards the degrading water quality of ponds. The current status of ponds urgently demands adoption of stringent measures & initiatives that can serve as benchmark on which the whole edifice of pollution control can be built.
KEY WORDS: Water quality testing, GIS mapping, Traditional water bodies in Meerut, Status of Ponds
