NEW DELHI: Birendra Kumar, a resident of Sector 3, Dwarka, angrily muttered, “We hardly get 1-2 minutes of clean water in the morning. What flows out of the taps after that is blackish water. I moved here recently, but the neighbours tell me this is a longstanding problem. I complained to
Delhi Jal Board
but nothing has been done, which means we have to buy water for drinking.” Kumar’s grouse is echoed in all the seven parliamentary constituencies in the capital, marking
water supply
as a pressing issue.
DJB, established under the Delhi Water Board Act, 1998, is tasked with supplying and distributing drinking water to the capital's 27 lakh consumer households. However, it is grappling with two major challenges: the quantity and quality of supplied water.
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The sources of water are the Yamuna river, Ganga water from Uttar Pradesh, water from Haryana, tubewells and Ranney wells. Disruption of supply from these sources is frequent and is particularly acute in the summer.
DJB is expected to supply water twice a day to all parts of the city, but water is often only supplied in the morning in many areas, and even then, for just an hour. In Dec last year, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal held a review meeting with DJB officials to address the issue of
contaminated water
. According to officials, Kejriwal emphasised the need to identify the root cause of water contamination and develop an effective strategy to tackle the problem. However, it appears that little has been done to ameliorate the woes of consumers.
There is also a conflict over funds, with govt accusing the bureaucrats of withholding allocated money for DJB. Since Nov last year, contractors responsible for maintaining the water supply network and sewerage have been agitating about pending bill payments and the matter has reached the courts. Water minister Atishi clashed with the finance department over the non-release of funds, warning that a "man-made crisis" was inevitable if sufficient funds were not released promptly.
Sanjay Gupta, general secretary, Model Town Residents Society, expressed frustration when he said, “We pay our water bills regularly, and we are the ones who are being penalised by the supply of dirty water. The problem is recurrent in nature, and the water supply is irregular. Our colony gets only two hours of water every day. The water is undrinkable."
Amit Singh, general secretary, Indian Water Quality Association, explained the reasons for the poor water quality: "If water is dirty and smelly, then there is sewage leakage somewhere in the pipeline. Also, when people use a pump, then during the non-supply hours, mud and accumulated water gets sucked in."
Conflicts over
water shortage
have erupted in the city. Recently, an incident led to the death of a woman in east Delhi's Farsh Bazar. While DJB asserts that there is no water scarcity, it is a fact that water production has remained unchanged in the past few years. In Feb 2023, an internal report submitted by DJB to CM stated that the optimal water production level was 990 million gallons per day (MGD). However, as per DJB’s May 18 report, the water production is around 998 MGD, while the city's requirement, according to the latest economic survey report, has risen to 1,290 MGD. This demand is only going to increase in the future with the rising population.
Last year, DJB came up with an action plan to increase water production. Among the measures to be taken was an ammonia treatment plant, which would solve the recurring problem of highly polluted water from the Yamuna. However, more than a year has passed, and the plant construction work is yet to begin. Whenever there is a rise in ammonia levels, the water production capacity at the Wazirabad plant is drastically reduced. The plant sometimes needs to be shut down, disrupting the water supply in several parts of the city.
Despite the Yamuna snaking through the capital and sufficient monsoon showers, the city is unable to tap the surface water. In 1994, five basin states of Haryana, UP, Delhi, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh signed a memorandum of understanding for the tentative allocation of Yamuna surface water. In order to utilise the flow of river during the monsoon, the construction of Renuka dam in Himachal Pradesh was proposed. Three decades later, the work is still incomplete.
