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Thirsty Gurgaon bears it again
Ahead of summer, the Haryana Urban Development (Huda) has a shocker for residents of a parched Gurgaon.
Ahead of summer, the Haryana Urban Development (Huda) has a shocker for residents of a parched Gurgaon.
According to top Huda officials, its reservoirs will be ready by the end of this year. This reservoir will be used to store water from the 800-cusec capacity National Capital Region (NCR) water canal. The canal itself will be ready by the end of this month, while the irrigation department will conduct a trial run in May.
The irrigation department will also shut down the current 150 cusec Gurgaon water canal in May. After this water supply will be channelised to the NCR canal. However, this move will not result in increase in water supply capability. One of the reasons is that the end points of the NCR canal are not connected with higher-capacity reservoirs, which Huda was supposed to build and operate on time.
According to the Huda administrator, the proposed reservoirs for the NCR canal will be set up in two phases. “One reservoir will be built by the end of this year, while another be ready by December 2012.”
Moreover, the R322-crore NCR canal will be launched only this month-end. “We have one railway overbridge work left at Asoda village in Jhajjar, where we have already constructed the concrete slabs. This will be ready by April 30 and we will conduct trail run of the NCR canal in May, when we will shift water supply from the Gurgaon canal to the new one,” said Ajay Singh Yadav, minister of finance, irrigation, environment and forest, Haryana.
Irrigation officials said the move will not result in increase in water supply, unless the Huda reservoirs are ready. So residents will continue to depend largely on limited supply from the Gurgaon canal, plus other sources such as ground water extraction through borewells.
Last summer too, residents, especially in New Gurgaon colonies such as DLF City, Sushant Lok and Palam Vihar, had to manage with one-two hours of water supply daily. They depended on private tankers that cost at least R500 per household. This year, too, the situation may repeat.
