A K. Bajaj, a senior retired officer of the central Ministry of Water Resources, gave a presentation at the Arya Samaj, Defence Colony on August 9 on ‘Issues and Problems in supply of drinking water to the city of Delhi’. He explained that Delhi has very little own sources of water and depends for almost 80 to 85 % of its requirements on outside sources. Here’s what he had to say.
Delhi’s requirement for its population is 1290 million gallons per day (MGD). Out of this, Delhi has only about 150 MGD from its own resources and for the rest depends on the neighbouring states like Haryana, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh.
Also, Delhi is perpetually short of supply-able water and can supply only about 1100 MGD at the most from its nine water treatment plants (WTP) and ground water. When water is available to the WTPs they can produce a maximum of 950 to 1000 MGD and even at the best of times the citizens of Delhi are starved of their UN recommended quantity of water and must make do with less.
The outside sources from where water is channeled into the Yamuna River to supply to Delhi are the Sutlej River in Punjab (400 Kms away), the Bhagirthi River (a tributary of the Ganges) from Uttarakhand (300 kms away) and various tributaries of Yamuna in Uttarakhand and Himachal. Haryana contributes to Delhi from its own allocations. We citizens of Delhi need to use water very judiciously and not waste water in hosing our cars and courtyards. We should all install water harvesting structures in our houses.
