NEW DELHI, May 7 – UNICEF has reported arsenic contamination in ground water in 18 districts of Assam and fluoride contamination in five districts.
Based on information from Chief Engineer (PHE) of the State Government, a UNICEF study has found arsenic and fluoride contamination, Minister of State for Water Resources, Vincent H Pala said in a Rajya Sabha reply to a question by Naznin Faruque.

As against the North Eastern Council’s (NEC) 56 road projects proposals, the Planning Commission has granted ‘in principle’ approval to only 25 projects.
In a Lok Sabha reply, Minister of State for Planning, Dr Ashwini Kumar said of the 25 approved projects, at least 15 have been sanctioned by 11th Finance Commission. In addition, Planning Commission has given approval for the ‘North Eastern Region Community Resources Management Project’ to cover Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.

JORHAT, July 17: Consumers of the Urban Water Supply scheme here have been literally left high and dry with the water hard coming in at a trickle and many taps running dry in the last few days.
Venting his ire on the poor services of the Urban Water Supply scheme, Partha Baruah said that the raising of the tariff from Rs 120 to Rs 312 was unjustified given the hours of water which is supplied to most houses.
"In the evening when previously two hours of water was usually given, nowadays no water comes and our overhead tank of 50 litres becomes empty,' he said.

JORHAT, July 16: The Jorhat Municpal Board has hiked the quarterly water tariffs from the current Rs 20 to Rs 100. According to the civic body, the increase by five times has become inevitable due to the surge in electricity bills after the installation of digital meters at the five water supply projects operated by it in the town. Chairman Prasanta Kumar Borah said that JMB is footing a power bill which is upwards of Rs 1.80 lakh on account of the water supply projects. Before the installation of digital meters, the bill used to hover around Rs 70,000.