THE WATER QUALITY ASSESSMENT
AUTHORITY, ITS FUNCTIONS AND PRESENT
STATUS.
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The Water Quality is being monitored by several
agencies in the country. The Central Water Commission and
Surface Water Agencies in respective states while developing
water resources through various projects mainly concerned
with the requirements for irrigation and drinking water in
terms of quantity and to some extent quality. The Central
Ground Water Board (CGWB) and respective State Ground
Water Agencies develop Ground Water resources depending
upon the recharge potential with the similar objective. The
Central Pollution Control Board and its State counter part are
mainly concerned with the monitoring of water quality
deterioration and responsible for prevention and control of
pollution under Water Act, 1974 and Environment
(Protection) Act, 1986. The National River Conservation
Directorate (NRCD) under this Ministry also monitors the
Water Quality to evaluate the implementation of pollution
abatement schemes for river conservation. Network of water
quality monitoring stations frequency and parameters
monitored are available with the Authority.
In view of the multiplicity of agencies involved in
water quality management in the country with no virtual
coordination among them, the problem of pollution of
national water resources has become the matter of serious
concern. To circumvent the situation, the Ministry of
Environment and Forests has constituted a Water Quality
Assessment Authority (WQAA) with effect from 29 th May,
2001 through a Gazette Notification dated 22nd June,2001.
The Authority is empowered to exercise the powers under
section 5 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 for
issuing directions and for taking measures with respect to
matters referred to in clauses (ix), (xi), (xii) and (xiii) of subsection 2 of section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act,
1986.
The mandate of this Authority is to direct agencies to
standardize water quality monitoring methods, ensure proper
treatment of wastewater to restore the water quality of
surface and ground waters, take up R&D activity related to
water quality management and promote recycling and reuse
of treated wastewater.
The Authority will also direct the concerned agencies to
draw up Action Plan for quality improvement in water bodies
and monitor and review implementation of schemes launched
including optimum water abstraction, maintain minimum
discharge in the riverine system. The detailed terms of
reference of the Authority is included in the Notification.
The Water Quality Assessment Authority has so far
performed the following tasks:

Constituted the Expert Group for review of the
present Water Quality Monitoring programme for
formulating a monitoring protocol. The protocol
has been finalized.

Constituted the State Level Water Quality Review
Committees to review the monitoring practices at
the state level and to highlight the important state
issues for consideration by the Authority. So far
33 state level committees have been constituted.

Co-ordination cell in MoWR has been created for
servicing the Authority.
EXPERT GROUP
An Expert Group on Water Quality Monitoring System
was constituted under Water Quality Assessment Authority
with a view to unifying and streamlining the widely varying
Water Quality Monitoring Systems being followed at present
by various Central and State agencies.
Some of the important recommendations of Expert
Group for its uniform implementation are:
i.
The recommended protocol identifies different
types of stations both under surface and Ground
water category viz. Baseline, Trend and Trendcum-Surveillance/impact for implementation.
This categorization is based on the extent to
which the water at site is polluted, the Baseline
station being the least polluted by the human
activity. Number of parameters and its frequency
for monitoring differs at each type of stations.
ii.
There is an urgent need for developing two
referral laboratories, one with Central Water
Commission and the other with Central Ground
Board.
iii.
Quality assurance test viz. analytical quality
control test ‘within laboratory’ and ‘interlaboratory’ must be performed by all laboratories
for ensuring reliability in data generation.
WATER QUALITY
STATES:
REVIEW
COMMITTEES
IN
So far, Water Quality Review Committees are
constituted in 33 States/UTs out of 35 States/UTs in the
country.
CO-ORDINATION CELL IN MOWR
The co-ordination
functions:
cell
performs
the
following
 To work as Secretariat for WQAA meetings.
 To work as Secretariat for WQ Monitoring Committee.
In the second meeting held on 14th May 2003 the
Authority generally accepted and approved the report of the
Expert Group, which is being subjected to scrutiny from
technical and operational angle before Notification under
Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
Under the Water Quality Assessment Authority various
Task Force/Groups have been constituted. These are:
1.
A Water Quality Monitoring Committee has been
constituted under the Chairmanship of Additional
Secretary and Project Director, Ministry of
Environment and Forests.
This Committee
assists the WQAA in its functions.
2.
A Task Force chaired by the Chairman, CPCB has
been constituted to deal with matter relating to
coordination, use and dissemination of data,
review of water quality monitoring network,
accreditation of water quality laboratories. The
Task Force has submitted its report.
3.
A Working Group has been constituted with
Member, Central Water Commission (CWC) as a
Chairman. This group deals with issues relating
to minimum flows in rivers.
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