Sol-Crusaders, the environment club of our school, took up the project ‘Yamuna - Water Sampling and Testing’ in 1993 to find out more about the river.

Our seniors took up this challenging project with the help of WWF-India and Development Alternatives. They deserve a bravery award for wading through the dirty and filthy bank into the greenish black brew called Yamuna! The saying goes - one wouldn’t die of drowning in the Yamuna waters, but by drinking the Yamuna waters! In the earlier project, water samples were collected at three sites – Wazirabad, ITO and Okhla barrage – and some of the tests were conducted at the site and some at the IIT, New Delhi. The results showed that the quality of water was deteriorating rapidly from Wazirabad down to Okhla.
 

Seventeen major drains carrying municipal sewage, authorised and unauthorised, from housing colonies and jhuggi jhopdi clusters, effluents from industries and agricultural wastes join the river. As a result, the dissolved oxygen (DO), which gives an indication of the health of the river decreased from four mg per litre at Wazirabad to zero mg per litre at Okhla. A river with zero DO is "dead"! Not fit to be called a river at all.

To find out about the state of the river downstream, we joined the ‘Paani Morcha’. We ventured on a yatra along the banks of the river from Delhi to Agra. This time, we were trained to use the portable water testing kit. We started the yatra from India Gate and conducted our first set of tests at Okhla, followed by tests at Vrindavan (Kesi Ghat), the holy town of Gokul and at Agra (behind the Taj Mahal). Dhobi Ghats on the banks and open drains join the river at Vrindavan to make it holier!

We announced our results in a public meeting at Vraj Academy and showed the red chironomid worms from the river.

What struck us most was the faith that the people, local as well as pilgrims, had in the holiness of the river. Our meeting made at least some people think whether the river was holy at all.

At Vrindavan, the local people said they were prepared to donate about six acres of land for setting up a biological treatment plant to revive the river and bring the "Vraj" back to life again.

But we also faced some resistance from officials and a section of the public who would not take our findings seriously saying "these school children with a bag of bottles and syringes have come to tell us how the water is? These tests are done by MSc students in laboratories with sophisticated instruments." As we had taken up this project as a challenge, we had learnt the chemistry, physics and biology of water and the various tests, taken all the necessary precautions and had our earlier Delhi results checked with the Development Alternatives’ laboratory. We argued with confidence and were branded as "activists". The yatra gave us a rich experience of not only monitoring the river water quality but also of interacting with the local people and understanding their problems.

Over the years, we found the river water deteriorating very fast despite promises given to us by the then Minister for Environment, Delhi. We wanted to find out about the status of the MCD water supply and the bore-well water supply. We joined the DEAN (Delhi Environment Action Network) project launched by Development Alternatives. Under the project, Delhi has been divided into 12 zones based on certain environmental parameters. Zone eight has been allotted to us. We have selected nine sites, some are bore-well pumps near slums at Okhla industrial area, others include MCD supply in housing colonies, and the river water at Okhla. We conduct tests for 14 parameters four times in a year. Now we have completed more than a year of this programme.

We have found levels of fluoride, nitrate and phosphate to be very high. The areas surrounding almost all the bore-well pumps are dirty and are stagnant pools of water having colonies of mosquitoes and larvae. The open areas near the jhuggis are used as open toilets and dustbins. There are a few bore-well pumps which cater to these slums dwellers. There are no toilets, no drainage system, no MCD truck goes to collect garbage. In many of these areas, water and electricity are free of cost and several houses had television too!

Here, a motley crowd of men, women and children would surround us with anxiety to look at our ware of bottles, test tubes and injection syringes. (we use them in the place of burettes and pipettes). Initially, they said: "Tika lagwane aaye hai kya?" But later some of them were interested in knowing how good or bad the water was and whether it was fit for drinking and cooking. An old lady said something which touched us a lot - "If you school children go and tell the sarkar about the water and the conditions here, they might do something to improve this place."

At Rashtriya Indira Camp (opposite Kamal Cinema) people have diverted the water to a small piece of land near the jhuggis and started growing crops like corn and vegetables. Therefore, the area around the bore-well pump is no longer slimy.

Each year a fresh batch of students join this project. Our friends from the previous batches help us, train us and share their experiences with us. Although, initially some of us joined it more for an outing, soon enough we got totally involved in it.

We feel that we have taken up a responsibility and our work is taken seriously by the NGOs and government officials, our findings are used for something constructive, and most important of all we have learnt to respect the environment. Sometimes, we had to work after school hours and on holidays too. But then, we have realised that: "Now is the time for action and we have to do it." q