Repair work at Haryana water canal on, normalcy by Tuesday: Delhi Jal Board

The cause for the breach, which has affected the supply of raw water to parts of the Capital, is yet to be ascertained

A day after a portion of the boundary of channel-lined canal (CLC), or the Munak Canal, broke near Barwasni village at Sonepat district in Haryana, affecting the supply of raw water to parts of the Capital, Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officials on Sunday said a team has been dispatched to the site of the breach to oversee repair work of the canal, which is likely to take 48 hours.

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DJB said that the cause for the breach is yet to be ascertained. The breach, around 20km upstream of the Delhi-Haryana border, is near the same spot where another breach occurred four months ago, on June 14, the officials said.

A senior DJB official said operations at Haiderpur water treatment plant were affected after it received less raw water from CLC and Delhi Sub Branch (DSB) canals. “The channel was breached on October 7 early in the morning near Badwasni village, and restoration work started at 11am the same day. A team of DJB officials has been deployed to visit the repair site. Haryana has provided us verbal assurances that the canal will be restored in two days, by Tuesday,” the official said.

HT reached out the Haryana government, but officials there did not respond to queries about the breach in the canal.

The disruption in water supply has led to low water pressure and supply in localities in north and northwest Delhi. Ashok Bhasin, who heads the North Delhi Residents Welfare Association, said DJB issued an advisory about the breach quite late on Saturday, and thus residents were unable to store water. “If the breach had occurred in the morning, an alert should have been run immediately. We have received complaints of tail end areas not getting water, such as Patel Nagar, Subhash Nagar, and extension areas. Moreover, the tanker helpline is not very responsive,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rajesh Panwar, who heads the Vasant Kunj Federation of RWAs, said the water supply has not been impacted in their south Delhi locality, but residents are being asked to use water judiciously in wake of the alert issued by DJB.

A second DJB official aware of the matter said that normally, more than 400 million gallons per day (mgd) of water is carried by the CLC canal, while the DSB canal, which runs parallel to it, carries around 227 mgd water.

“To circumvent the 150ft-long breach along the boundary wall of the CLC canal, raw water has been diverted from CLC into the DSB canal. The water is then carried by the DSB canal for a short distance, and is then diverted back into CLC at Kakroi,” the official said.

“However, only a portion of water is being diverted into the DSB canal, as we cannot load the canal beyond its carrying capacity. Around 100 mgd water supply is likely to be affected,” the official added.

Atul Goel, president of the United RWAs Joint Action (Urja), a collective body of RWAs in Delhi, said if the same site has been breached for a second time, then an investigation should be carried out to check the structural strength of the canal walls, and to probe whether someone is maliciously damaging the canal.

“Besides affecting the water supply to thousands of families in Delhi, this breach must also be impacting villages in Haryana, damaging their crops and property. A thorough probe must be carried out,” he said, adding that some lanes in localities such as Rajinder Nagar complained about not getting water on Sunday.

The Munak canal 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 the Munak regulator in Haryana’s Karnal district, and travels south via the Khubru and Mandora barrages, before finally terminating at Haidarpur in Delhi.

In 1996, the Delhi and Haryana governments signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) and the canal was constructed by Haryana between 2003 and 2012. This canal is one of the two major channels that carries Yamuna water from Haryana to Delhi and directly feeds two DJB water treatment plants — Bawana and Haiderpur. The canal water is also used to partially run the Nangloi and Dwarka plants, officials said.

According to the Delhi economic survey 2022-23, Delhi gets 40.8% of its water supply from the Yamuna (river channel, CLC and DSB canals), 26.5% from the Ganga, and 23.1% from the Bhakra storage (Ravi Beas). The remaining 9.6% is obtained from ground water aquifers through tubewells and ranney wells.