SHILLONG, March 18: The Urban Affairs department is planning to take up the cleaning and rejuvenation of Wah Umkhrah through the Shillong Municipal Board (SMB).
Sources on Friday said the work will include dredging along stretches where garbage has piled up for years.
As on date, around 2,000 metric tonnes of garbage has been disposed of at Marten. Dredging has been done along a stretch of over 2.5 km of the river, the sources said.
To prevent further littering, the sources said stone bunds have to be erected at certain points of the project.
According to the sources, the bunds are needed to arrest the floating of garbage, if any, at easily accessible point and make the river more aesthetic by having natural-looking barriers than having a concrete check dam.
“These 1 to 1.5 metres high bunds will not interfere with the flow of the river and therefore, the apprehension of the bunds causing possible flood situation will not arise,” an official said.
They said solid waste traps will be installed at the idol immersion ghat and the outfalls of the tributaries of the river to prevent the same from flowing and accumulating in the river.
These works have been funded through the Finance Commission Award at an estimated cost of Rs 3.6 crore, the sources said.
In addition, under AMRUT, effluent treatment plants (ETPs) will be set up at the outfalls, four tributaries of Wah Umkhrah and one tributary of Umshyrpi to further improve the river’s water quality. The ETPs are meant to treat the water in the selected drains before it is discharged into the river.
Further, under the smart cities mission, drains will be treated using bio-remediation technology. Through this technology, which does not require chemical treatment and hence, environmental friendly, the parameters of the water quality shall be brought to permissible standards before discharging the same into Wah Umkhrah.
The sources said the SMB is also strengthening its waste management system through awareness campaigns, improvement in collection efficiency and improvement of the level of segregation at source.
Newer equipment with up-to-date technology is being introduced to bring more efficiency in the cleaning of drains and roads. Efforts are also being stepped up to prevent haphazard disposal of solid waste into Wah Umkhrah and Umshyrpi and into the drains and streams flowing into the rivers.
The efforts also include the eradication of direct discharge of sewage into the river and its tributaries, the sources said.
The work for cleaning the river was taken up by the SMB in 2019 but it could not be continued due to the pandemic.
During the period, besides the physical cleaning of the river, about 1.3 km stretch of Wah Umkhrah was fenced to prevent dumping of garbage into the river. A total of about 780 meters of fencing was also taken up at 12 garbage vulnerable points of Umshyrpi and at the major tributaries of the river, the sources added.