Munak breach repaired, water supply in Delhi to be regular soon

This is the second time in the last four months that the walls of the canal breached near the same location

The repair work to plug the breach on the boundary of the channel-lined canal (CLC) or the Munak canal in Haryana’s Sonepat district completed on Monday evening, and full-scale operations in the canal are likely to be restored after 12 hours, senior Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officials said.

Repair work on Munak canal in Sonepat on Monday. (HT photo)

The channel section near Barwasni village was damaged early on Saturday morning, disrupting raw water supply to the water treatment plants, which feed north and north-west Delhi. This is the second time in the last four months that the walls of the canal breached near the same location.

A senior Delhi Jal Board official said that the breach along the 150-feet section was reported at 11:00am on October 7 and the DJB had issued an SOS to the Haryana irrigation department on the same day. “They have completed the repair work with addition of soil-based bunds and a layer of concrete on the canal walls around 3:00pm on Monday. Water cannot be released immediately as the concrete will take around 12 hours to settle and dry up. Haryana will start releasing water tomorrow and full-scale operations will commence during the second part of the day. The water takes around three to four hours from the breach point to reach Delhi. We assume 100% restoration of raw water supply will take place tomorrow during the evening supply hours,” the official added.

DJB supplies around 960-980 MGD (million gallons per day) of water to the city through its nine water treatment plants. These plants are fed by raw water coming from Yamuna river channel, Munak/CLC canal, Delhi sub branch (DSB) canal, Upper Ganga Canal and sub-surface resources. The Munak canal is one of the two major channels that carries Yamuna water from Haryana to Delhi and directly feeds two water treatment plants of DJB — Bawana and Haiderpur. The canal water is also used to partially run Nangoli and Dwarka plants, the officials said. DJB said that the cause of breach of canal is yet to be ascertained.

A second DJB official said that normally more than 400 MGD water is carried by the CLC, while the DSB canal, which runs parallel to it, carries around 227 MGD water. “Over the last three days, water is being re-routed via DSB canal but the its capacity limit translates to around 10% raw water shortage. We are rationalising the supply by alternating the supply on morning and evening shifts to minimise the impact of rationing and since the demand levels go down during the non-summer period, we are not facing an acute crisis,” official added.

The Haryana government has not responded to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, residents in the tail end areas continued to face water supply shortage. Silky Manchanda, a resident of Uttam Nagar, said that the water supply in the region near Shukra Bazar has remained disrupted over the last few days. “We have filed multiple complaints, but nothing is working,” she added.

The CLC is a 102-km aqueduct that is part of the Western Yamuna Canal in Haryana and Delhi. The canal carries water from the Yamuna at Munak regulator in Karnal district of Haryana, and travels south via Khubru barrage and Mandora barrage, finally terminating at Haidarpur in Delhi. A memorandum of understanding was signed between the Haryana and Delhi governments in 1996 and the canal was constructed by Haryana between 2003 and 2012.