DELHI GOVT BANS USE OF FRESH GROUNDWATER IN CITY PARKS
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SK MALIK
Apr 25, 2015, 9:24:12 AM4/25/15
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DELHI GOVT BANS USE OF FRESH GROUNDWATER IN CITY PARKS
Apr 25, 2015
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on
Friday banned the use of fresh groundwater in city parks, asking land-owning
and civic agencies to buy treated waste water for horticulture purposes.
The move will help tide over Delhi’s
perennial water crisis and also monetise reclaimed water. The government will
now ask the Union government’s Central Ground Water Board to issue a
notification to this effect.
The capital has 8,000-odd parks
maintained by various public authorities such as the public works department
and the municipal corporations. About 80 MGD (million gallons per day) of
water, sufficient for one-tenth of Delhi, is used for horticulture purposes.
The draft of Delhi’s first water policy
also says the Capital must increase its recycled wastewater use to 25% by 2017,
50% by 2022 and at least 80% by 2027.
This is to meet its non-drinking
requirements and reduce fresh water use. There is miniscule use of cleaned up
waste water now.
“They will now have to purchase treated
waste water at Rs 7 per kilo litre. This means revenue of Rs 100 crore per year
to the Delhi Jal Board. Agencies buying this reclaimed water will have to
develop the required infrastructure and DJB tankers will make the supply,” said
a source.
DJB chairman and Delhi’s deputy CM
Manish Sisodia took the decision during a meeting with various land-owning and
municipal agencies.
Manoj Misra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan
welcomed the move but cautioned that for its success the government must
separate sewage, industrial waste and storm run-off. “Otherwise, how else would
you treat and use the toxic cocktail that flows in common drains,” he said.
Officials say DJB has the potential of
reclaiming 500 MGD of waste water. Sanjay Sharma, research head at Citizens
Front for Water Democracy, said, “About 150-200 MGD can be sold (the rest needs
to flown into the Yamuna for environmental reasons), DJB will earn more than Rs
200 crore per annum.”
The water utility gets surface water
from Yamuna, Sutlej and Ganga. It also extracts ground water with bore wells.
Despite a network of 11,350-km-long pipelines the demand-supply gap is 265 MGD.
The demand-supply deficit results in
illegal bore wells being used. This causes groundwater level depletion---by a
maximum of 1.44 metres per year. The latest move will reduce the use of illegal
bore wells.
“If waste water is cleaned up at local
levels instead of only at big plants more recycling and re-use is possible,”
Misra said.
When AAP was in power for 49 days, it
had tried to make it a policy decision. The plan could not roll out because
then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal resigned.
Arun Banerjee
Apr 26, 2015, 12:09:34 AM4/26/15
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Its time to start using treated sewage water for horticultural purposes.
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