the Central Pollution Control Board's (cpcb) effort to come out with a new water quality reviewing criteria after a gap of 20 years has proved futile. Most of the states' representatives felt it was not important. The cpcb had organised a workshop for this purpose on February 19-20, 2001, but it was attended by representatives from a few states only.
The present criterion for assessing water quality in most of the states is not in accordance with the rising pollution levels. A few startling facts were revealed during the conference. cpcb has no records of the water quality across the country as many state pollution control boards fail to give an account of the situation. Misuse of funds allocated for testing water quality is rampant. Another problem to which a solution was sought pertained to classifying waterbodies as inferior or superior, but no decision was arrived at.
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