Delhi: Water supply related issues
This is a collection of articles, mainly from the Delhi- based press. |
Contents |
Disputes with neighbouring states over water
Legal disputes, till 2024 April
Khadija Khan, June 2, 2024: The Indian Express
Why has the Delhi government approached the SC?
Despite taking several measures, the Delhi government has not been able to tackle the water shortage issue. This has precipitated an emergency in the form of a full-fledged water and sanitation crisis and has necessitated an emergent solution, according to the government’s petition.
The AAP government has also said that Himachal Pradesh has agreed to share its surplus water with Delhi, but the water will have to be transported through the Wazirabad barrage with the Haryana government’s cooperation, which isn’t being provided currently.
Adding that the water levels in the Sonia Vihar and Bhagirathi barrages, the other primary sources for Delhi-NCR, are operating at full capacity, the government contended that an increase can only be considered at the Wazirabad barrage. However, despite requests to Haryana to release surplus water, there has been no positive response.
Stating that additional water supply is necessary due to Delhi-NCR’s large workforce and migrant population, the government added that it was only seeking relief as a “stop-gap arrangement” until the monsoon season’s arrival.
What were the other instances?
On March 31, 1995, the SC passed an interim order acting on a plea, filed by one Commodore S D Sinha, which sought direction to Haryana to maintain a regular flow of water in the Yamuna River amid drinking water shortage in Delhi.
The order said, “Delhi which is in dire need of water is to be given its allocation of water with immediate effect. We, therefore, direct all the parties to the Memorandum of Understanding to assure that sufficient water, which… is about 2 ½ times of the seasonal allocation, is released from Tajewala Head so that Delhi gets 0.076 BCM [It is this quantity of water, Delhi has to get under the MoU, between March to June.] for its consumption during the period March to June 1995.”
Signed by the Chief Ministers of five basin states on May 12, 1994, including Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh, the memorandum dealt with the allocation of Yamuna water amongst the co-basin states of the Upper Yamuna Basin by the Board under the Department of Water Resources, River Development, and Ganga Rejuvenation, Union Ministry of Jal Shakti. It stated that when the availability of water is less than the assessed quantity, the drinking water allocation of Delhi has to be met first, while the balance will be distributed among the remaining states in proportion to their allocations.
The bench had also issued directions to Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, through their Chief Secretaries of the Irrigation Departments, to release the water for consumption of Delhi from Tajewala Head with effect from April 6, 1995. However, the court made it clear that its order was an “interim measure till the time the members of the Board and the Review Committee” were appointed and it became functional.
In the aftermath of the 1995 ruling, two contempt petitions were filed before the SC, one by Delhi Water Supply and Sewage Disposal Undertaking and the other by Commodore Sinha, for wilful violation of the order dated March 31, 1995. These culminated in the 1996 ruling in Delhi Water Supply and Sewage Disposal Undertaking v. State of Haryana.
What did the SC rule in 1996?
Disposing of the contempt pleas, a bench of Justices Kuldeep Singh and BL Hansaria on February 29, 1996, ruled, “Delhi shall continue to get as much water for domestic use from Haryana through River Yamuna which can be consumed and filled in the two water reservoirs and treatment plants at Wazirabad and Hyderpur. Both the Wazirabad and Hyderpur reservoirs shall remain full to their capacity from the water supplied by Haryana through River Yamuna.”
The court also directed Haryana not to obstruct the supply of water to Delhi as directed by it, while adding that its order was independent of the MoU signed between the states.
“We, therefore, close the proceeding by requiring Haryana to make available the aforesaid quantity of water to Delhi throughout the year. Let it be made clear that any violation of this direction would be viewed seriously and the guilty persons would be dealt with appropriately,” the court said.
However, in 2021, when the water level in the Wazirabad pond, which supplies water to treatment plants in the city, dipped to 667 feet, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) filed a petition before the top court alleging willful disobedience of the 1996 ruling by the Haryana government.
What was Delhi’s case against Haryana?
In its plea, the DJB said that the Haryana government was stopping the water supply to the national capital and not releasing 120 million gallons of water per day. However, the Haryana government said that the situation in Delhi was caused by “internal mismanagement.”. On July 23, 2021, a bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, A S Bopanna, and V Ramasubramanian dismissed the batch of contempt pleas filed by the Delhi Jal Board, seeking action against the Haryana government.
Saying that the 1996 order was passed as “an interim measure till the time the members of the Board and the Review Committee were appointed” and it became functional, the court said the Delhi government couldn’t resort to the same now owing to the large-scale infrastructural developments that have taken place since February 1996. For instance, the court noted that since the 1996 order, three additional water treatment plants have been set up at Bawana, Dwarka, and Okhla.
Dismissing the Delhi government’s case, the court said, “The Petitioner has failed to make out any case for contempt against the Respondents. The Petitioner is cautioned to be careful in filing petitions repeatedly for a relief which has been rejected by this Court on earlier occasions.”
Water supply
Sources of water
2019/ Illegal use of borewells
Ritam Halder, July 29, 2019: The Times of India
From: Ritam Halder, July 29, 2019: The Times of India
Zero water bills point to illegal use of borewells, multiple connections
ORGANISED COLONIES UNDER SCANNER FOR LOW CONSUMPTION
New Delhi:
Organised colonies in the city are now under the scanner of National Green Tribunal for low water consumption as many dwelling units have reported “nil” bills. This has raised the suspicion of largescale unauthorised use of borewells. An interim report submitted by the Yamuna monitoring committee to NGT also talks about the possibility of Delhi Jal Board having sanctioned more than one connection to a household.
“There are two types of organised colonies — those where houses are built on individual plots (Lajpat Nagar, Greater Kailash, all colonies on Vikas Marg like Preet Vihar) and group housing colonies like the ones in Dwarka, Rohini, etc. About 50% of houses built on individual plots and 50-60% in group housing colonies have been paying nil bills for water and no fees for sewage collection and treatment despite causing pollution daily. This works against the polluter pays principle,” the panel’s report states.
The report added that the percentage of organised colonies consuming less than 20 kilolitre water is very high. It is not clear whether the increase in numbers is purely due to water conservation or there are other reasons.
In 2015, holding every Delhi resident responsible for polluting the Yamuna, NGT had ordered each household to pay Rs 100-500 monthly as environment compensation. However, not a single penny has been collected by the authorities as yet.
“The number of household water meters has increased by 40% from 17 lakh to 23.7 lakh in four years after the launch of the 20kl free water policy by Delhi government. The possibility of different ploys being used by people, like multiple connections within the same premises, to avail of free water cannot be ruled out,” the report said.
The supplementary report to the interim report, which was submitted in July, stated: “A strong direction is needed to be given to make everyone pay a flat rate for sewage collection and treatment, even if they are using less than 20kl water. Those using more than 20kl are in any case paying for sewage treatment. DJB charges Rs 11.93 per kilolitre for the sewage it treats on behalf of NDMC and Cantonment Board. A specialised institution like National Institute of Financial Policy and Planning or CAG may be directed to examine the costs involved and revenue generated as it is leading to mindless pollution of the environment and depletion of groundwater.”
However, DJB vice-chairman Dinesh Mohaniya said the figure of 50-60% water bills being “nil” in upscale areas seems highly exaggerated. “Prima facie, the data seems very suspicious. This scheme is not for high-end colonies and people there are using water much above the 20kl limit. The main beneficiaries of the scheme are people in lower income groups. People may be blending DJB water with borewell supply, but 50-60% consumers cannot be just using groundwater,” he added.
Talking about the “polluters pays principle” and “nil sewage charge” argument by the committee, Mohaniya said that zero charge on sewage is not impacting the pollution in Yamuna. “How is this impacting the treatment of sewage? The sewage is being treated. Should cooking gas subsidy also be stopped?” he asked, adding that policy making and implementation should be left to the executive and judiciary shouldn’t get into people-oriented schemes.
2020
From: November 1, 2020: The Times of India
See graphic:
The Sources of water supplied in Delhi, as in 2020.
=Water, drinking-=
RO not required for DJB water
Jasjeev Gandhiok & Paras Singh, May 29, 2019: The Times of India
From: Jasjeev Gandhiok & Paras Singh, May 29, 2019: The Times of India
A day after the National Green Tribunal asked the Centre to ban use of reverse osmosis (RO) purifiers in areas where the TDS (total dissolved solids) in water is below 500 mg/l, Delhi Jal Board claimed that the water it supplies to the city does not need to be RO-filtered.
The water you get in your taps has a TDS of 350-400 mg/l, DJB officials said. Hence, there was no need to use RO purifiers except in places where the supply is mixed with borewell water or where only borewell water is being used. A reverse osmosis machine removes contaminants from water by passing it at pressure through a semi-permeable membrane. In the process, it also removes minerals beneficial to our health from the water — although most RO manufacturers say their machines re-introduce minerals in the purified water.
NGT’s main concern was the enormous amount of water that is wasted in the RO process, with some estimating it to be almost three-fourth of what is processed.
DJB said most Delhiites do not need to use RO. “We had recently undertaken some random sampling and found that the TDS levels were around 350 mg/l,” said a DJB official. “The TDS level of the water that comes out of our treatment plants is tested and usually found to be in the range of 350 to 400 mg/l.”
STOP WASTAGE
NGT tells MoEF to restrict usage of RO for water
In its order on Tuesday, NGT had asked the ministry of environment and forests to issue a notification prohibiting the use of RO in areas when the TDS level was below 500 mg/l to ensure less wastage of water. The order added that in places where use of RO is allowed, a condition must be enforced that 60% of the water will be recovered. Later, this threshold should be stepped up to 75%.
The water that goes waste should be used for the purpose of washing utensils, flushing, gardening, cleaning of vehicles and mopping of floors, the order added. NGT’s directions came after a report by National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Central Pollution Control Board and IIT-Delhi was submitted early this week. The report, prepared on NGT’s directions, stated that RO is meant only for treating dissolved solids and, according to BIS standards, drinking water is considered below par only if TDS is above 500 mg/l.
The report had also come down heavily on RO manufacturers. “RO manufacturers should provide labelling on the purifier specifying that the unit should be used if TDS is more than 500 mg/l. Application of RO in developed countries is limited to desalination, that is, producing drinking water from high TDS containing seawater (which is salty). The growing use of this technology in treating low TDS water is the new normal in India,” the report had said. The DJB official said, “Most of the water supplied to Delhi comes from Yamuna and river origin raw water does not have very high TDS levels all over the country. The problem is limited to only those places where water is supplied from borewell sources. Drain No. 6 coming from Haryana also has high TDS while the 80 MGD of water that comes from borewells might too have a similar issues.”
The official pointed out that some housing societies were illegally using borewells to mix groundwater with DJB water. “In a bid to avail water subsidy under the 20KLD scheme, some residents in upscale areas use borewell water which costs much less. In case of such blending, the final mixed water will have high TDS values of 1500-1900,” said the official.
Experts say TDS is not the only parameter for clean water. “The water could have a TDS of 350-400 mg/l but it won’t necessarily be clean. The water needs to have the right ions, pH level and essential nutrients,” said Vikram Soni, an ecologist and physicist, who specialises in water.
2019: a survey of 61 colonies
Paras Singh & Jasjeev Gandhiok , August 13, 2019: The Times of India
Keerat Singh of Paschim Vihar has installed an advanced water purification system in his home, the local wisdom being that tap water requires reverse osmosis (RO) filtration for it to be pure enough for drinking. Like his neighbours, Singh doesn’t know that the water supplied by Delhi Jal Board to the area has a total dissolved solids (TDS) count of around 85mg/l, an excellent range for raw water supply even by global standards. The RO water purifiers Singh’s family uses reduces TDS to 29mg/litre, removing not only essential minerals, but also wasting a large volume of water in doing so.
DJB has long claimed that the water it supplies to residences in Delhi has TDS levels well below the Bureau of Indian Standards ceiling of 500 mg/l. The water utility has gone so far as to claim that no RO filters are required in any home to rid the water of unwanted solids.
Water better than WHO would want it
The negative perceptions about piped water have, however, left residents reluctant to accept DJB’s claims about the quality of its supply. TOI, equipped with TDS meters, visited 60 residential colonies with varying geographies and income levels to assess DJB’s claims. The findings showed an over whelming majority of the colonies getting water with dissolved solids in the 100-200 mg/l range — a level even better than the 300 mg/l prescribed by World Health Organization, irrespective of the character of the colony. For example, RK Puram Sector-3, a government colony, gets water with 80-90mg/l TDS, but Ravidas Camp, a JJ cluster nearby, too has water of similar quality at 90-98mg/L.
Moderate to high TDS in water not only changes the taste of water, but also poses health hazards. Tuhin Banerji, water expert at NEERI, confirmed that RO filtration was necessary to remove these solids, especially if underground water was used for drinking purposes. However, studies by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have established that most RO purification systems discard 70-75% of the raw water fed to them. This rejected water can be used for some household purposes other than drinking or gardening, but is thrown away.
Given the wastage of precious water, the National Green Tribunal asked the central government on May 28 to formulate a policy to ban the use of RO filters in areas where TDS levels in water was below 500mg/l.
In TOI’s tests, locations like Rohini’s Sectors 8 and 14, Mayur Vihar Phases I and III, Chittaranjan Park, Trilokpuri, Khureji Khas, Rajouri Garden and Tagore Garden showed TDS values of 80-90 mg/l, meaning an RO filter would be ill-advised in homes there. In some cases, there were inconsistencies in readings within the same colony. While TU block in Pitampura received water with 75-80 mg/l TDS, the SU block a few streets away had water with TDS in the 310-330mg/l range. A DJB official explained that the entire colony did not receive water from the same source. “There are several colonies that are supplied by different plants based on proximity and the pipeline network. One colony could well be getting water from two different water treatment plants,” he said. Also, how old or well-maintained the water pipelines are can well cause two houses or apartment buildings in the same DJB area to have varying TDS counts.
RO for the right reason
While tap water was generally ‘pure’ as far as dissolved solids were concerned, water extracted by borewells, as at Sarvodaya Enclave, returned results showing TDS at as high a level as 1100 mg/l. Many households, especially in south Delhi, use both piped water and borewell water with 480-1100mg/l TDS, meaning they certainly require RO systems to improve the quality of the water they use.
There, however, is rising awareness about the TDS levels, especially among households planning to install a water filtration system. Renu Kaur, for instance, installed a ultra-violet purification system rather than an RO device in her J Block Rajouri Garden home after finding that tap water there had low TDS readings. “We only found out about the TDS level in our water when we wanted to put in an RO filter. We were told the TDS here were between 80 and 90 mg/l and a UV filter was, therefore, better suited for our needs,” said Kaur. Her new UV filter, she claimed, eliminated the strange smell in the DJB supply while maintaining TDS at a healthy level of 65-70 mg/l. In some locations, like Laxmi Nagar, RO purifiers brought down TDS levels from still-safe 485mg/l to as low as 28.
Contamination is quite another issue
In west Delhi’s Sham Nagar locality in Vishnu Garden, the DJB water TOI tested was dark in colour. “We cannot use the supplied water due to the smell and colour, though RO improves the quality,” said resident Geeta Bansal, adding that the people there had to recently start using submersible pumps for water that was clearer, but with higher TDS levels of around 470 mg/l.
DJB officials said the colour of water mostly changes due to contamination or corroded pipes. “We advise users to get their pipelines checked periodically to receive clean water,” said an official. DJB vice-chairman Dinesh Mohaniya asserted that the utility supplied water of “global standards” up to the ferrule points and most contamination took place beyond that. “Almost 99% of reports on contamination involve galvanised service pipelines beyond the ferrule point. These need to be replaced every 15 years,” said Mohaniya.
Water at all water treatment plants were within the acceptable limits of TDS. DJB officials explained the higher TDS counts at the consumer point as being the result of blending underground water at the tail end or due to ill-maintained pipes from the ferrule point onward. “Even then, the end point TDS levels are still within the permissible range,” an official added.
Water, waste-
Recycling from Barapullah nullah/ 2019
From: Jasjeev Gandhiok, 1,000 litres of clean water daily, straight from drain, January 4, 2019: The Times of India
What was set up as a pilot project to test how waste water from Barapullah nullah could be treated is now generating almost 1,000 litres per day for the capital. This could increase water production to 1 lakh litres per day in the next six months, say officials working on the project near Sun Dial Park at Sarai Kale Khan.
Part of the Local Treatment of Urban Sewage Streams of Healthy Reuse (LOTUSHR) project, a multitude of agencies and local bodies including IIT Delhi, NEERI, TERI and DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Biosciences have been involved in the project, which is partnered by the Netherlands government.
Officials say the specialised waste-treatment plant has proved to be extremely effective in cleaning water directly from the Barapullah drain, making it potable. The water is run through different technology phases with the sludge and solid separated through a filtration phase and catalytically thermo-liquified technology developed by ICT.
Union environment and science and technology minister Dr Harshvardhan who inaugurated the project said the plant is capable of producing 1 lakh litres of clean water per day in the next six months during which biofuel can also be generated from the sludge. The minister was speaking recently at an event announcing plans for Yamuna Action Plan Phase-III.
“We are already producing 1,000 litres per day of clean water from the Barapullah drain and this can be used for several purposes, be it for irrigation, in parks or daily use...the Barapullah nullah can be utilised to generate water for Delhi’s use,” said Vardhan.
But officials said water quality would gradually improve to drinking standards. Immediately, it would be available for daily use and at parks.
DDA has leased the 200 squaremetre area for a period of five years. “Biofuel production is being tested and can be ready in the next six months,” said a government official on condition of anonymity.
TERI researchers involved in the project said a survey carried out in the Barapullah area in almost 400 households found that people were still apprehensive about using treated water for bathing or drinking, but wanted to utilise it for groundwater recharge and gardening.
“We found that there was more willingness for low-contact activities, but there was less acceptability for activities like washing, bathing or drinking. The idea under the project is to take the water quality to acceptable and even drinking standards so it can have multiple uses,” said Joyita Ghose, associate fellow, TERI.
B
Delhi Jal Board
Release of funds: 2020-24
From: Atul Mathur, August 25, 2024: The Times of India
See graphic:
The Release of funds to the Delhi Jal Board: 2020-24
