Cleaning Musi River - Learning from International Examples

This insightful article by Sonia Grover and Charu Bhanot is an outcome of literature survey done for a project for two basins—Yamuna and Musi rivers. In the earlier article, they discussed about Yamuna River. This article is particularly on Musi River and talks about the challenges and reflections from best practices at international scale that could be used as learning to improve water quality of the basins.

- Sonia Grover and Charu Bhanot

In India, the Musi River flows through Telangana state as a tributary of the Krishna River on the Deccan Plateau and is a perennial river. The River meanders through Hyderabad city, dividing the ancient city from the modern city. The River is listed under Priority-I of CPCB Classification and "34 most polluted river stretches" of India. The river had previously become a dumping ground for untreated industrial and residential trash from Hyderabad due to haphazard development and an inadequate planning. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation disposes 94 per cent of sewage water drains into the Musi River coming from 54 main Nalas. The state of Musi River is quite deplorable. The key challenges attributing to this state are presented here.

Water Treatment Gap: The sewerage generation for 2021 of Hyderabad city was 1960 MLD and existing treatment capacity 772.3 MLD. There is a wide gap of 1187.7 MLD. During NGT hearing on Musi River pollution, there was a proposal for 31 sewage treatment plants (STPs) and 17 STPs with capacity of 376.6 MLD that were sanctioned under a decentralized hybrid annuity mode.