Water Contamination

[An Essay, 252 words]

Dealing with water contamination is and always has been a major hurdle for developing societies.

70% of the earth’s cover being water and almost 70% of us being water, polluted water is definitely a concern and obviously not something we would like to have, now would we?

Water contamination comes in all forms - from floating plastic bags to toxic chemical waste. The water we drink and use in our day to day life comes from lakes, ponds, rivers and oceans. Many of the small-scale factories in the industry nowadays, release toxic wastewater by-product into these water bodies, untreated.

Agricultural runoff ( filled with insecticides and pesticides) are also to be held responsible.

However, these two reasons are just the tip of the iceberg. The main culprit here is untreated sewage. It is the problem India is facing right now.

Sewage discharged from cities, towns and villages is the predominant cause of water pollution. You can look at the numbers - About 40,000 million litres of sewage per day are being produced in our major cities alone, but only about ¼ of the total is being properly treated. As a result, many of the water bodies including groundwater and especially our rivers are being severely polluted. This is quite ironic and untrue to our culture, our tradition where we treat rivers as gods themselves. We worship them thinking for only our good and not sparing a thought about the tragic condition of our rivers, of our gods.