One Week Training for Environmental Regulators on Water Quality Management Plan in Delhi

 January 18 – 22, 2016

About the Programme

In January 2016, we have organized a week long programme on “Water Quality Management Plan”. Sine, the issue of water quality management is a combined responsibility of various departments; we have targeted pollution control boards, municipalities and PHED departments of various states across the country. A total of 31 participants took part in the programme out of which 24 were from SPCBs and 7 were from PHED, Jal Board and Municipal corporations.  

24 participants were from 12 state pollution control boards (2 each from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya, 1 each from Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir and 4 from Telangana), 1 from central pollution control board, 3 from public health engineering department (2 from Haryana and 1 from Odisha), 1 from Guwahati jal board and 3 from Thane municipal corporation.  

The programme was a mix of various regulatory frameworks currently exists in India dealing with water quality management and class exercise. The participants were taught inventorization of water usage & waste water generation from domestic and non-point source, i.e agricultural land; industrial waste water characterization and water accounting; need & allocation of water quality monitoring networks. The programme finally taught the participants on how to strategize the water quality management plan starting from the planning stage, stakeholder identification & consultation, and finally adoption of treatment technology as part of outlining the water quality management plan.  

Training Session

The programme was inaugurated with an interactive session with the participants where in the participants were asked to first share their expectation from this programme, following which the programme schedule was shared with them. 

The participants were given an overview of the organization, wherein they were taken to the library, media room and shown to the DWWT and rain water harvesting structure. After this formal introductory session, the participants were divided into four groups and asked to come out with various issues and challenges they are currently facing when dealing with water quality management aspects. This has resulted in the emergence of few practical issues, for which they worked out strategies on the very last day as part of the exercise on water quality management plan.  

In the second half, Dr. D.D. Basu talked about the current legal frameworks exist in India which deals with water quality management and explained the roles and responsibilities of the various regulatory bodies and the need for their inter-connectivity in ensuring wholesomeness of water quality. 

The second day was completely focused on the inventorization of water usage by various point and non-point sources and waste water generation from each and every user point. The session was taken by Dr. D.D. Basu. It was a combination of technical session on how to conduct inventorization and parallel class exercise where in participants were given with exercises on inventory making.  

Two separate sessions on various treatment options for domestic sewage and industrial effluents were also there. The discussion focused on the selection procedure of treatment techniques in case of domestic effluent, and the various treatment technologies for industrial effluent coming from various industries, specially sugar and distillery and textile unit. This session was reframed and elaborated based on the expectation analysis came from the very first day of the training.

The participants were also given exposure to the various water conservation techniques, where in Ms. Susmita Sengupta discussed about the need and scope for rain water harvesting techniques and Ms.Chhavi Sarda talked about the scope of decentralized waste water treatment and reuse and recycle of treated water. 

A full day was given to the participants for coming up with a water quality management plan, as the participants were given with a hypothetical scenario of a polluted river basin. All the four groups had come up with very innovative strategies and/or suggestion for making an effective water quality management plan. 

The programme was ended with a valedictory session on the last day, which was attended by Mr.J.S.Kamyotra and Mr. Sethuramalingam, former Member Secretary and the present training coordinator of CPCB respectively. Mr. Kamyotra appreciates the programme a lot; however he had suggested for keeping an audio-visual back of the entire programme, so that it can be shared with other participants who have not been able to participate in the training course. 

The overall feedback was taken from the participants, some of which are noted below:

Few suggestion and feedback received during the programme are as noted below:

• Training to be conducted in abroad to know the BMP available with other countries;

• Laboratory techniques for water and wastewater analysis;

• Advanced treatment technologies for water and wastewater;

• Field visits including industry & STP units must be there in the schedule;

• Lake management for urban areas including monitoring techniques;

• Some of the participants are requested to extend the duration of the programme to two week, where as few felt that it should be reduced to 4 days; 

• Most of the participants said they will surely recommend this training programme to others and in that case, one of the most common things was that they all wanted to recommend the programme to their colleague from the respective pollution control boards and municipal authorities;

• Few of the participants suggested making this kind of training programme mandatory in their respective state board for their employees; 

• Participants are interested in recommending the water quality monitoring network and management plan strategies to their respective boards;