Non-biodegradable Waste and their impact on the natural source of water. An ordeal and an experience worth sharing.

Welcome to my blog. Friends, how are you all ? I hope you all would be fine and must be enjoying your lives to the fullest. Today, here, I will be talking about Insensitivity of people, climate change, and its impact on my local environment over the years.

From the age I started remembering things ,the stream flowing in front of my house used to be crystal clear. In case of drinking water scarcity via the distribution pipeline, we used to fetch water from the stream for the drinking purposes. Our clothes, utensils were washed without any extra expense of detergent because the water hardly contained any hardness.
The stream of water used to be so clean that even the bed of the stream was clearly apparent and even one could find a lost needle out of it. Children used to store water placing temporary barriers to the flow of water resulting in the increase in the water level on the upstream side and it used to be a mini pool for children to enjoy. Even the adults of our society used to take bath in the stream without having any fear of contacting any disease and in fact the stream would act as a Panacia and helped people to get rid of skin diseases and allergies.

Over a period of time with the increased use of plastics and polythene wrappers, these non-biodegradable materials started getting accumulated on the banks of the stream. The main reason for such accumulation is that there is no authority to look after these streams other than Flood and irrigation department, who are only concerned with the impacts of Flood and the Irrigation uses of the stream.
People who couldn’t afford to have a pit nearby their house started accumulating the legacy waste alongside the banks of the stream,as a result of such indiscriminate accumulation of materials, the stream started getting polluted and now people also refined from using its water for any Household purposes.

I being one among the persons who live very close to the stream know exactly the extent of pollution that the stream has been exposed to over past 10 to 15 years. The entire pollution is caused by the non-biodegradable plastics .

It’s disheartening to see that at this point of time the water is not fit for use and it has even crossed the highest limits of pollution and still people are not concerned with the loss of this natural asset. The importance of the stream is felt in the summer days when the glaciers lose the major part of their water and the distribution system that delivers water to us runs dry. But the importance fades away once we get water through the pipeline.

Very little number of sensitive people of our society exactly know the importance of the stream. I being very closely linked to it can feel the essence of this beautiful stream,being one of the persons who have spent a lot of childhood days in the stream, bathing and playing with sand, making sand houses, et cetera, but the same stream seems to be so dirty that one could hardly dare to do such activities or even walk through the waters of the stream.

I being an official of the Rural development department working in government of Jammu and Kashmir have raised this issue a number of times with the local authorities and the concerned departments.In this initiative, some other youth of my village have promised me to provide support to curb the menace of pollution and also protect its potential of helping people in the time of water crisis. The local authorities have started imposing ban on dumping non-biodegradable waste alongside the banks of the stream, but still some people do not obey the rules, maybe just because of the compulsion of not having space to accommodate such waste.

I have been successful to some extent, but still a lot is to be done before the children would once again, start bathing in the stream without carrying any fear of contacting any disease.

Today, after a gap of around 5 to 6 years, I could find some children bathing in the stream, happy and excited. I could relate my childhood days with the children when we used to stay the most part of the hot summers in the stream.We used to beat the heat by staying inside the stream for long and it used to be our main recreational activity.

I am striving hard to convert the stream to the same, pure,aesthetically beautiful stream that it used to be around 20 Years ago.It indeed is an hard task, but human determination and dedication can achieve anything in this world.

Thank you, I’ll be continuing this blog in my next post. Until then,Bye.