E-Kantipur

MAR 20 - Flowing down the rolling hills of Shivapuri National Park, the Bagmati, Syalmati and Nagmati rivers are cut into a reservoir, where their waters are siphoned through a powerhouse to arrive at Sundarijal, or ‘beautiful water’. Here, at Kathmandu’s only water distribution site, after weaving through various filtration basins, 60 to 70 percent of the streams are harnessed into 20-inch metal pipes for the needs of a swelling city. Between 90 and 120 million litres of water are pumped through these pipes every 24 hours, from which the city’s over 3 million inhabitants tap into their aqua-lifeline. The leftover tributaries barely creek through a too-fast-and-too-furious city, glug past Chobhar gorge, and drool downstream into the Ganges reap with infection.

Today’s tragic fate of the Bagmati and its tributaries could soon be tomorrow’s forgotten history, if appropriate solutions are to be implemented. The government-endorsed five year Bagmati Action Plan (2009-2014) prepared by the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and the Bagmati Civilisation Integrated Development Committee aims to restore and conserve the Bagmati river system in the Valley. The Plan classifies five zones of the river; each based on water quality and population density, and has prepared a plan of action for each zone.

Zoning in on zone one

Zone one covers the upstream catchment area and is by far the least-populated with the best water quality. It is also the largest of the five zones, stretched over 323 sq. km from Phulchowki to Nagarjun. The Plan’s proposed involvement and investment here is minimal, and aims to “maintain and enhance the upstream river ecosystem”.

Sangeeta Tamang lives in Okhreni village, just below the source of the Bagmati at Bagdwar, in Zone One. Her house includes a toilet, as opposed to many who openly defecate. For her, as for almost everyone living in the watershed of the Bagmati and its various tributaries here, water is hardly a limited resource. It flows steadily out of cemented spouts, hoses and other makeshift taps, channelled directly from the countless kholcha-kholchis and groundwater.

Locals here sometimes draw from the government-dammed reservoir—an interception considered ‘stealing’, says Samden Sherpa, the reservoir caretaker, who for more than 12 years has ensured that diversion occurs only legally. He also regularly surveys the reservoir’s water level. In the past, he says, there was enough water here to run two machines to pump water for almost 20 hours a day. Now, there’s only enough to constantly run one machine for that length of time; the second machine is used occasionally.

The Shivapuri hills were declared a wildlife reserve in 1985 and a national park in 2002, which made cutting trees for firewood illegal. The success of more than two decades of such reforestation measures is apparent, with once barren hills now green with trees, thus also increasing rainwater recharge in the Bagmati’s catchment area.

At Shivapuri National Park, army guards eavesdrop on and curtail human violations for lumber. “We steal wood from the forests nearby. If caught, samaatera laijaancha (they arrest us),” says Masino Shrestha. She lives lower downstream by the hawkish homes, restaurants and stores that have clustered round the park’s main entrance. She doesn’t have a toilet at her home, but points to a neighbouring cemented construction that acts as one. Waste water from overflowing septic tanks, laundry and dishes often flows straight back into the river here. Closer to the grumbling engines, troughs along the climbing trail are lined with plastic waste—gifts of a growing tourist population—despite numerous cement rings lodged for their incineration and bilingual placards prodding visitors against swimming and polluting.

Plan of attack

“Useless,” hurls a visibly-irritated Hutram Vaidya, an environmentalist, at the Bagmati Action Plan, and the years of neglect for what was once a revered and unadulterated river. “The Bagmati is dirty because it has too much money. Can you revive lost nature by spending money? The starting point should be our culture. We need to involve local people as much as possible, not paid labourers; and reduce imported materials.”

While the Plan has oft been criticised for its overzealousness—detractors say it is not conceivable given the current lack of funding and ineffective leadership, and that a small-scale, localised approach would have been better—these charges do not seem to apply to the Plan’s proposals in the peripheral zones, where activities that require little funding and much community involvement are to be advanced. The zone divisions were envisaged as a way of identifying the exigencies of a multifaceted river system on a micro-level. It is true that recommendations for highly urban zones involve exorbitant expenses—such as those on centralised waste water treatment plants—and would probably be delayed until the funds are furnished, but the less investment-heavy work in upstream zones could continue unobstructed immediately.

Whereas the total budget for the Plan comes out to be more than Rs. 14 billion, zone one has been allocated a negligible 1.5 percent of that amount for the full five years. Dr. Siddhartha Bajracharya, executive director of the NTNC, explains, “The problem with people who look at the Bagmati is that they only look at the micro level and at highly-urban areas where it is most polluted, for example at Kupondole and Thapathali. The beauty of the Plan is that it is the first time that we have smartly and carefully zoned the Bagmati. If the first three sectors can be handled properly, where not much effort or cost is needed, then the maximum physical investment can be used up in Zone Four.”

Roshan Shrestha, chief technical advisor at UN-HABITAT—an organisation that provided technical assistance for the Action Plan—agrees. “We don’t need to implement everything immediately. First we move through the individual zones, then we go full-scale.” He feels that despite not having all the necessary funds to implement the plan, a lot can be done in the first two zones to maintain cleanliness and increase water volume.

The Action Plan’s commitments for Zone One include efforts to enhance river water discharge, conserve the catchment area, maintain water quality, renovate cultural heritage sites, and promote eco-tourism. Even with support from public and private partners, success in this zone will mainly depend on the involvement of communities to implement activities and enforce behaviour. A few activities will need to be realised by non-local actors, including construction of embankments closer to the source in the village of Dhap, which should enhance the capacity of the natural wetland and increase water volume—the designs for this project have already been prepared. Expert know-how will also be needed to detail aquatic and terrestrial inventories and for regular scientific monitoring of river quality. Eventually, the Plan ensures that locals begin to make money off of the river through eco-tourism initiatives such as adventure sports, bird watching, and sightseeing.

In oblivion

In spite of all these promises, the locals have not yet seen the government do anything substantial and are more or less oblivious to the Action Plan. “Sabai halla matrai ho,” complains Temba Sherpa, “it’s all a rumour.” Some locals do their part to prevent waste water and solid waste being dumped in the river. Many have very specific and practical ideas on what needs to be done: every Saturday, when picnickers come to revel, hire two people to clean up the residual mess; enforce picnicking rules; maintain a collective dumping and burning site; train locals on how to build ecological toilets; build sewage systems so that waste water flows parallel, not convergent, to the river; and build low seepage dams where water can collect. “This is our drinking water after all” says Bhir Bahadur Tamang of Mulkhadka village. “The Bagmati is there for us.”

“It is a matter of local pride,” says Shailendra Shrestha, another local, alluding to a crucial, yet unquantifiable condition to nurse the Bagmati back to health. Pride reflects credit back from an object to its subject; it reveals the subject’s sense that his actions have contributed to the object’s praiseworthy state. A bond is formed, and an interest in sustaining that bond. Fortunately, such pride prevails among the individuals in zone one, where the river is still a direct source of livelihood and visible part of the landscape.

But, it will not be long before indifference and convenient inertia creeps in and cements upstream. Once the source of concern for the river has been sapped dry, replenishment will be a formidable task. While the Action Plan has sound ideas for this zone, they need to be applied without delay, because soon enough unplanned and unbounded development will make these suggestions irrelevant. And in the implementation, it should emphasise a more organic approach of engaging locals so as to ensure sustainability, rather than doing the clean-up for them. This may be less costly, but will likely take more time and effort than the Bagmati Action Plan has accounted for.

smriti.mallapaty@gmail.com

Posted on: 2010-03-20 12:00

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