Delhi Jal Board’s water production at all-time high: Raghav Chadha

The water shortage situation had worsened on Monday, when the water level in Yamuna fell to its lowest since 1965, according to the Delhi Jal Board.

After nearly a week of shortage, Delhi’s water production on Sunday reached an “all-time high” of 955 million gallons per day, Delhi Jal Board vice-chairperson Raghav Chadha said.

Vice chairman of Delhi Jal Board (DJB) Raghav Chadha claimed that water production by the Delhi Jal Board is at an all-time high of 955 MGD. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

“I’m pleased to inform that today Delhi’s water production by the Delhi Jal Board is at an all-time high of 955 MGD against the usual 910 MGD. Due to sufficient availability of raw water in River Yamuna as well as engineering solutions, we have managed to push our optimum levels,” Chadha tweeted.

Over the last one week, Delhi has been witnessing a “severe water shortage”, which was attributed to Haryana not releasing the requisite water quantity to the Capital. Last Sunday, the DJB also filed a petition before the Supreme Court seeking directions for the Haryana government to release Delhi’s share of water.

The most affected areas were Old and New Rajinder Nagar, Greater Kailash, Prem Nagar, Punjabi Bagh, Tughlakabad, Sangam Vihar, Ambedkar Nagar, Okhla, Raja Garden, Tagore Garden, Tilak Nagar and Subhash Nagar.

Revealing the data of the water shortage, DJB had said that Yamuna River’s level at Wazirabad pond dropped from 674.5 feet to 667 feet, bringing down the Chandrawal water treatment plant’s capacity from 90 MGD to 55 MGD; Wazirabad plant’s capacity to 80 MGD from 135 MGD and Okhla plant’s capacity to 12 MGD from 20 MGD.

The situation worsened on Monday, when the water level in Yamuna fell to its lowest since 1965, according to DJB. In a statement, the board said that Yamuna’s level went down by 7.5 feet because Haryana withheld Delhi’s share of water, which is 120 MGD.

Through the week, however, as monsoon hit the national capital and the neighbouring states on July 13, 16,000 cusecs of water was released by Haryana.

“Even though water was released by Haryana on Tuesday, it takes a few days to reach our water treatment plants. Till Friday we were monitoring the status of our WTPs very closely and ensuring that free tankers were doing the rounds in the affected areas,” said a senior DJB official.

The official explained that the water tankers were being monitored through a water tanker distribution management system (WTDMS), which tracks the tankers in real time every 10 seconds through GPS through their journey.

“The WTDMS makes available the date on movement of tankers on any given day along with trip and duty performance report at the click of a button. This has significantly improved the water tanker system in Delhi,” the DJB official added.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also hailed DJB’s efforts and assured that measures were being taken to provide uninterrupted water supply across the city.

“Govt is doing its best to provide water to all. Our engineers are working 24x7 against all odds,” tweeted Kejriwal.