Maharashtra Government Has No Idea About Arsenic Levels In State's Water, Has No Good Reasons For It Either

In December last year, a committee helmed by Murli Manohar Joshi presented a report establishing high arsenic content in the groundwater in certain parts of the country, pinning 10 states. Maharashtra was not on this list. But before celebrating this, here is a reality check ¡ª the state has not run any checks for arsenic content in its groundwater since 2003. Reason ¡ª non-availability of manpower and equipment to run the tests. While the state has tried to argue its lack of participation on the ground that there is no arsenic presence in its groundwater, the report's findings of the heavy metals in the waters of its neighbour ¡ª Karnataka ¡ª is no happy tiding. This has prompted the Union government to question the smugness of the state government and push to run proper checks.

"On the basis of the report, we called a meeting of secretaries of all the states and interrogated the ones that had failed to submit the relevant data. Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand were among these. Maharashtra maintained that there is no arsenic content in its water. However, on further inquisition, we found that the tests are not being done due to lack of manpower and requisite infrastructure. We have now insisted that the state use allocated budget to set up labs equipped to test for arsenic content. Until that happens, they should direct their samples to the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI)," Satyabrat Sahu, joint secretary of the Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, told Mirror.

According to the Joshi committee report, over three lakh people in the country have suffered arsenic poisoning. Sahu is confident that more cases will emerge if the tests are done with due diligence. "The status of states like Maharashtra that have shown negative results are suspect. Many drink borewell water, which is known to be contaminated with arsenic presence. When Karnataka, which shares its borders with Maharashtra, has thrown up evidence of a high level of heavy metals in its waters, how can the latter be immune to it?" he argued.

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Testifying to the absence of tests for arsenic in the state, the regional director of the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB, which comes under the Union Ministry of Water Resources), D Subbarao, explained, "No test for arsenic poisoning has been done here since 2003, due to technical and administrative glitches. The tests in the state are centred around checking for fluoride and nitrate content."

Caught on the back foot, the additional director of the state's ground water supply and development agency, Suresh Khandale, tried excusing the lapse saying, "Testing of arsenic or heavy metals in water is very expensive and we lack such facility. But we do test the water on 15 other parameters."

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Rubbishing this claim, Sahu pointed out that the state got about Rs 600 crore from the Centre for its drinking water initiatives, of which Rs 250 crore was expressly for setting up labs. With the state authorities failing, the Union government has also invited private labs that may have found vulnerable areas in the state to bring the information to its notice. "There is also a national programme by the health ministry in the pipeline on arsenic mitigation and treatment," Sahu added. The states are also being asked to form 'arsenic core committees', identify arsenic heavy zones and take remedial measures by 2017.

Health department was doing what water supply department had to do

In the state, for long the water testing was done by the health department at the behest of the ground water supply department. "We were never asked to conduct any test for heavy metals, though we have the facility to do so. Testing for arsenic such as chromium, lead, mercury and the kind is critical to battle the incidence of cancer, lung ailments, skin diseases like keratosis, which are all on the rise, particularly around industrial zones. Based on these observations, we have been pursuing permission to check for arsenic and are awaiting approval for it,"said Dr Subhash Kamble, deputy director, state health services (in charge of health laboratories).

But things are changing

Responding to the wake-up call, CGWB is finally getting its act together as its Pune-based director, Saurabh Gupta, pointed out, "Only last week, we collected 1,500 samples from different parts of the state, including Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Chandrapur in Vidarbha, and sent them to NEERI. The samples were collected from both industrial and non-industrial zones of the state and we expect the results in a month or two."

Both Babanrao Lonikar, state's minister for water supply and sanitation, and Babu Thorat, the secretary of the department, failed to come back after promising to do so when approached on the subject. They both chose not to pick up subsequent calls made to them.

(Originally published in Pune Mirror)