Former chairman of Central Water Commission V B Patel and Director of the Water Management Forum and president of Saurashtra Lok Manch Trust Shamji Antala issued this warning at the World Gujarati Meet in Vadodara on Sunday. They were speaking on `Possible Solutions for the Water Problems in 21st century Gujarat' as part of a session on the theme `Horizons of Gujarat in the 21st century'.

Patel said, ``Pollution is the main factor that threatens water resources; each cubic metre of sewage dumped into a river or lake contaminates hundreds of cubic metres of clean water. Abundant water resources are of little use if they are polluted, since pollution makes them a health hazard''.

Discussing the solutions, he said treatment and re-cycling of industrial effluent was desirable since they had the potential to pollute large volumes of fresh water.

Though recycling may not have a major impact in saving water, such measures needed to be implemented to save useable water resources from getting polluted, Patel said. Domestic effluent, for instance, could be used in gardening and agriculture, he added.

In several areas of the State, Patel said, the demand and use of water had outstripped the supply; against the availability of 650 cubic meters of water, the per capita water use at present in the State was 700 cubic meters. To top it all, he said, the utilisable resources was only 24 per cent of precipitation, compared to 47 per cent for the country.

As part of the solution, he advocated early completion of the Sardar Sarovar Project, diversion of rivers south of the Tapi and optimum exploitation of local resources.

Shamji Antala said that during the past 25 years, the water crisis had only worsened in the Saurashtra and Kutch regions; moreover, even north and central Gujarat had started facing the problem. The major reason for this was the heavy pollution of water resources in central and south Gujarat, he said.

Not only rivers but also ponds and other water bodies were getting increasingly polluted everyday and if measures were not taken, the situation would slip out of hands, Antala warned.

He cited a survey -- conducted by the Gujarat Ecology Commission, the Ground Water Board and other official agencies -- of 70 places in Saurashtra, Kutch, north, central and south Gujarat and said at all these places water resources had been polluted.

Expressing concern with the increasing industrialisation, Antala said the already starved Saurashtra and Kutch regions would also face a similar situation in the 21st century. While as many as 23 chemical projects were coming up in Saurashtra, the capacities of 10 big cement projects in the region are poised to expand from 50 lakh tonne to 65 lakh tonne by 2025 and generate wastes. Claiming that 16 important rivers in Gujarat had been polluted, Antala said while, earlier, the rivers posed a threat during heavy rains, ``now they seem to have become a permanent source of fear''. The government needed to wake up to these problems before it was too late, he added.