-The Times of India MUMBAI: Mumbaikars can now drink water straight from the tap, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) hydraulic engineer Ashok Tawadia said. According to BMC, an average 0.7% of water samples collected daily across Mumbai between April 2018 and March 2019 tested positive for Coliform bacteria, a group of microorganisms present in water bodies that indicate water may not be fit for drinking. This is far better than the WHO...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: Waste dumped in landfill sites is contaminating surrounding groundwater in the Tricity, according to a PGI study published recently in an international journal. Scientists fear non-segregation and unregulated dumping of the garbage has deteriorated the quality with the passage of time, an alarming sign. Experts say that once the groundwater becomes polluted, contamination persists and becomes difficult to treat due to physical inaccessibility. Concentrations of heavy metal ions...

Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day. "The higher up you go, the cleaner the water is likely to be, but there is a limit to how far one can climb to fetch a pitcher of water," she told IPS....