No water in taps: Why Delhi has issued a water SOS to Haryana

Delhi’s woes don’t seem to be stopping.

After facing a blistering heatwave, an acute shortage of coal , now, the Capital is staring at a water crisis.

People living in northeast Delhi, west Delhi, north Delhi, central Delhi, south Delhi, including Delhi Cantonment, and New Delhi Municipal Council areas are struggling with less water.

This is the reality of @ArvindKejriwal's world class Delhi.

People are craving for drinking water & where it comes, there is no clean water.

People of Delhi are sad, get out of false & paid advertisements & listen to the ppl of Delhi and vow not to vote for AAP anywhere! pic.twitter.com/o1hOfPZ4s0

— Amit Rakksshit 🇮🇳 (@amitrakshitbjp) May 3, 2022

The Vasant Vihar Welfare Association took to Twitter to share their complaints about water shortage.

Delhi's posh colony, Vasant Vihar facing unprecedented shortage of water. Negligible supply past three days. Delhi Govt needs to wake up. Why is our colony the only one that is facing this issue?

— Vasant Vihar Welfare Association (@VVWA_VV) April 29, 2022

Elsewhere, Sadh Nagar resident Vimla was quoted as telling Navbharat Times that previously, water would come for 10 minutes around 4 am each day during which she would fill one to two buckets of water and resume work. However, in the last few days, there has been no water. She is continuously waking up, checking the taps, and returning dissatisfied.

Residents of New Gupta Colony Sector-10 also have the same complaint — that they get up early every morning and wait until late at night for water, but there has been no water for several days.

Shahbaz Singh, a resident of west Delhi’s Rajouri Garden, was quoted as telling Hindustan Times that a similar situation prevailed in J-12 block of the area where “taps have been running dry for the last three days”.

The situation has become so dire that the Aam Aadmi Party-led government in the Capital has written to the Haryana Irrigation Department, for a second time in a week, asking it to release additional water in the Yamuna to prevent disruption in water supply in the capital.

We take a closer look at Delhi’s water shortage and the reason behind it.

Delhi’s water woes

The production levels at two of Delhi’s Jal Board’s (DJB) biggest water treatment plants has reduced drastically. According to officials, the water level at the Wazirabad pond has dropped to a critically low level of 672.6 feet, against the normal of 674.5 feet.

Moreover, the output at the Haiderpur plant has also dipped. The Haiderpur WTP, the largest in Delhi supplying around 225 MGD of water to the city residents, is facing operational issues.

The DJB said that there was excessive floating material choking the filter beds, causing problems.

Due to excessive & unusual floating and filter clogging algae material resulting into chocking of filter beds, treatment process has slowed down at Haiderpur WTP. The production is expected to become normal by tomorrow evening. #DJBWaterAlert

— Delhi Jal Board (@DelhiJalBoard) May 3, 2022

The flow in the Carried Lined Channel (CLC) and Delhi Sub-Branch (DSB), the channels that bring river water into Delhi from Haryana, is also “fluctuating”. The flow in the CLC was 563 cusecs against a normal of 683 cusecs.

Reason for water scarcity

According to officials, the sweltering heat is the driving factor for the water scarcity in the Capital.

A senior official of the DJB said the level of the Yamuna has been depleting with the heat, owing to which water production at the plants has reduced.

Also, the climb in mercury levels in the Capital has led to an increase in water consumption. Just recently, the Delhi government announced that it would provide 1,000 million gallons of drinking water every day during the summer season as against 935 MGD earlier to meet the rising demand.

Another cause for the water shortage could be attributed to the fact that several water bodies — lakes, ponds, moats that existed far back in the 20th century — have been encroached upon.

A 2014-report by Delhi Parks and Gardens Society had revealed that the Capital had lost over 200 water bodies had been encroached upon. Reports state that these lost water bodies have illegally been turned into cremation grounds, temples, a government school, stadium, and even a bus terminal of the Delhi Transport Corporation.

Another component to Delhi’s water bankruptcy is the unchecked use of borewells and tubewells. Veena Khanduri, executive secretary of the non-profit India Water Partnership, told Mongabay in a 2019 report, “We have withdrawn 25 per cent more groundwater than the natural recharge rate in Delhi.”

Water deficiency

Delhi is water deficient; in 2021, the requirement of water was 1,380 MGD, but the government was only able to provide 998 MGD.

In early April too, the Capital recorded water scarcity when ammonia levels in the Yamuna river were high. The concentration of ammonia in the river was 7.4 ppm (parts per million), seven times the level of around 1 ppm that the Delhi Jal Board’s water treatment plants (WTPs) can process, reported the Indian Express.

In 2019 too, Delhi suffered an acute shortage of water with the poor having to stand in serpentine queues just to get their hands on a bucket of water.

How Haryana has reacted?

An official on the Haryana side said that the DJB is being provided with their due share of water.

“We have been providing the mandated share. As far as extra water is concerned, there is a shortage on the Haryana side as well. Demand is on the rise, and there is definitely a shortage in the summer,” the official was quoted as telling Indian Express.

With inputs from agencies

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