Strange but True !

No tap water for 25% of Delhiites

NEW DELHI: As Delhi heads for polls, some key issues are agitating the common voter although these may not be felt as much by the city's well-heeled sections. One such issue is water. According to Census 2011, about a quarter of the city's 1.67 crore population does not get treated piped water. That's about 42 lakh people dependent on water tankers, hand pumps, tubewells etc.

Delhi Jal Board (DJB) produces 818 million gallons per day (mgd) of water while the demand is 1,025 mgd. That's a shortfall of more than 20%.

Delhiites who do get water supply are only slightly better off. In most colonies, the supply lasts for 2-3 hours. In summers, it gets worse. According to a survey done by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) last year, out of 111 resident welfare associations that responded to queries, 64 received less than two hours water supply in summer and 59 felt that water was unfit for drinking.

For the past 20 years, Congress and BJP have run the state government and the municipal corporations between them. Yet, they have been unable to deliver this basic entitlement to the people.

A deal was signed in 1994 to deliver water Delhi from three dams to be built in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. After 19 years, the dams are yet to be built. Two of them, Kishau and Renuka, have not even got clearances.

DJB has water treatment plants at six places with a combined capacity of 690 mgd. The CAGfound that at Chandrawal, pumps and flow meters were not working properly, the pond was silted with mud and waste water was leaking all over from 57-year-old sluices and gates. The pumps that push the treated water out were connected to pipes with smaller than optimal diameters, making the pumps less efficient.

Delhi has a very imbalanced and unjust water distribution set up. The CAG report points out that the whole water delivery system is mismanaged, inefficient and weighted in favour of some areas. For instance, the water treatment plant at Nangloi produces 40 mgd for a population of 23.47 lakh. That works out to about 77 litres per day per person.

However, the supply ranged from 3.36 litres per capita per day (lpcd) for 2.5 lakh people in Daulatpur to 225 lpcd for 1.9 lakh people living in Nangloi, according to the CAG report. Some areas in Vikaspuri get just 42 lpcd while others get more than 212 lpcd.

While DJB itself supplies about 128 mgd of groundwater through its network, the population left out of its network depends mostly on groundwater. This has led to a serious crisis of quality. According to the Central Ground Water Board's quality checks, parts of several districts have high nitrate, chloride, fluoride and salinity.

In 2009, 400 million cubic metres (mcm) of groundwater was being drawn out every year while availability was 290 mcm. Twenty blocks spread across the city were 'over-exploited' and five were semi-critical. Water table is falling at the rate of 40 to 100 cm per year.

So, not only is safe water unavailable to a large section of Delhiites, the future looks bleak too. Population is expected to grow while supply cannot keep pace, and groundwater is fast disappearing.

with thanks : Times of India : LINK