Chakraborty, et. al.

established in EKW area for monitoring the water quality round the year. It is

presumed that the residue of chemicals may persist at the end products (i.e. fish,

vegetables, paddy etc.) that may cause health hazards.

Besides turning ‘bad water into good’ fisheries in Megacity Kolkata, are generating

a huge turnover per annum as we can find in Bonhooghli Fishermen’s Co-operative

Society Ltd (BFCSL), situated at Baranagar area of Kolkata. The BFCSL has been

operating their business on 10 ha of water area out of 12.1 ha leased in land. Here

daily loading of wastewater is 3.5 million litre and BOD level reduced from 150

mg/lit. to 10 mg/lit. The basic objective of BFCSL is pisiculture in sewage-fed

wastewater. The production and productivity of pisiculture as well as return from

the sale of fish of BFCSL during 1999-2000 to 2003-04 has been presented in

Table-4. The compound growth rates of production and productivity are 1.46%

and 2.40%, respectively, which indicate commendable performance of the society.

It has been observed that the return from sale of fish has increased over the years

under review except 2001-02. The compound growth rate of total return from the

sale of fish has been observed to be 5.90% which is also very praiseworthy.

The sewage fed wastewater supplied by KMA (Kolkata Metropolitan Authority)

to different societies may be considered as an important input of the production

system of those societies. The societies generally pay rents for the respective water

bodies (viz. BFCSL pays ` 3740.00 for 12.21 ha of leased in area during 2003-

04) which are fixed arbitrarily. However no price is paid to KMA for supplying

sewage water which is the main component in these production systems. If some

price is paid for this sewage water it can be as a project fund for the renovation of

wastewater carriers and the wetlands which are suffering from many problems viz.

siltation, lack of water testing centres etc.

Conclusion

Indian Cities have been in under tremendous pressure of population growth as

well as with huge production of wastewater. Wastewater treatment projects have

found vulnerable due to various constraints. In result natural bodies around the

cities have been used as disposal site hence contaminated severely. So, controlling

pollution through managing the wastewater as well as resource recycling has

gained increasing urgency in recent decades.

Keeping this point in mind an alternate way has made known by Kolkata where

city wastewater has been used as revenue earning combination of agriculture and

aquaculture. The entire system created and developed by the local people in the

area is the unique of its kind and serve as a ‘Natural Kidney’ of the Megacity

Kolkata where sustain resource recovery system in the form of vegetable farms,

fish ponds and paddy fields. Despite of various constraints fisheries have been

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