Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Wednesday said Yamuna river cannot be cleaned before the Commonwealth Games that are scheduled to take place Oct 3-14 in the national Capital.
The river Yamuna, having been declared dead with its water all poisonous from 22 drains from all over Delhi feeding 800 million gallons of sewage into it per day, can kill a healthy human being.
In the 1850s, the Thames in London was so polluted and stinking that the Parliament had to be shifted away from the river, says Robert Oates, director of the Thames River Restoration Trust.
A century and half on, the river is much cleaner and Britain, he says, is now investing in cleaning a tributary of the Thames, the Lee, ahead of the London Olympics in 2012.
Times have changed since stretches of the River Thames were declared "biologically dead" in the 1950s. A colony of seahorses was revealed to have made the London waterway its home this week, joining more than 100 species of fish, dolphins, seals, porpoises and the occasional whale spotted in the murky waters in recent years.
Seahorses Found In Cleaner Thames UK: April 8, 2008 LONDON - Marine biologists believe seahorses could be breeding in the Thames as the river becomes cleaner. About five short-snouted seahorses, (Hippocampus hippocampus) have been spotted during routine conservation surveys, leading scientists to think they have probably established a resident population. The news has been kept secret until now because the seahorse has not been protected. But from Monday, the marine creature and its environment will have protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981.
The discovery of a colony of short-snouted seahorses (Hippocampus hippocampus) living in the Thames means that the London river is becoming cleaner, conservationists said today. Scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have discovered five seahorses during routine conservation surveys in the Thames estuary in the past 18 months, evidence which they say indicates that a breeding population exists.
The mayor of London has launched a legal campaign to stop a water-treatment plant after the government overturned his refusal to grant planning permission.
Some Londoners see reason in Livingstone's arguments. Claire Powell, a psychology graduate living in East London, says desalination should be used in desperate situations and "we are not there yet'. "Thames Water has a terrible record with leaky pipes and water wastage.
