Delhi’s Looming Water Crisis: Can We Afford to Do Nothing?
Delhi’s water supply is rapidly dwindling. The government will have to move fast if it wants to prevent a crisis.
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Drought is a common story for rural India, but urban India too faces water scarcity. In Delhi, the problem is at its worst.
The city depends on unreliable sources of water from the neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and groundwater and recycled water from the Yamuna. Around 70% of Delhiites get only three hours of running water daily, according to the Ministry of Urban Development.
Last year, potable water supplied by the Delhi Jal Board was around 3400 million litres per day, against demand of 3800 million litres per day.
The reliability of the supply has been threatened in the past due to factors such as the Jat agitation in February; protesters had destroyed the Munak canal, one of the main sources of water in Delhi. This proved just how much Delhi water supply can be affected if even one of the water sources is blocked.
At the same time, the groundwater table is depleting at an alarming rate, and the decline rate is as high as 1.7 to 2 metres/year in some areas. In Delhi, daily water consumption is the highest in the country (240 litres per capita per day). To meet the escalating demand, groundwater has been highly exploited. The state government has declared South and South-West districts of Delhi as over-exploited, and restricted groundwater from being further extracted.
In spite of low availability and high demand, around 20-25% of all water is wasted due to negligence. According to The Smart Water Networks Forum, Delhi loses 51% of it’s water, which is lost before it ever reaches the consumer (non-revenue water). In Bengaluru and Chennai, the losses are 36% and 12% respectively.
TERI too undertook an assessment of the supply system of four cities of Madhya Pradesh and found that water losses were in the range of 20-40%.
Till date, Delhi has not found a sustainable solution to recurring water issues.
Recently, the Delhi government came up with a summer action plan, under which all the constituencies of Delhi will be supplied water as per demand. The functioning of the Bawana and Dwarka treatment plants will add 60 million gallons a day to supply, and the installation of 12 tube wells will also enhance supply by 15 million gallons per day. But to meet water demand this summer, the number of water tankers is also being increased.
At the national level, the Government of India launched a major project for achieving universal coverage of water supply – the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) on 25 June 2015. One of the targets of AMRUT is to provide improved water supply, access to a tap with assured water supply, expanding existing water supply infrastructure and recharging groundwater for which Rs 500 billion has been allocated over a five-year period (2015-16 to 2019-20). The project has the potential to revive water infrastructure by improving the delivery of water to consumers with minimal losses.
Water supply systems across the country must undergo a comprehensive auditing exercise to identify losses and find avenues for conservation. Water harvesting structures should be made mandatory in all residential and commercial buildings. Further, there is a need to develop contingency plans to cope up with water crisis situations, and public-private partnerships could play a role in enhancing the capability, capacity and efficiency of existing water networks.
Fayaz Ahmad Malla, Research Assistant, TERI – Mr Fayaz Ahmad Malla is currently working in TERI as a research assistant. He worked on agricultural water use efficiency and wastewater treatment for irrigation during his Masters and on Biogas enrichment methods for his PhD.
Sonia Grover, Associate Fellow, TERI – Ms Sonia Grover is working as an Associate Fellow in Water Resources & Forestry Division of TERI. She is a hydrologist by training and is involved in multiple projects related to the water sector.
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