Flood it with fresh water to give it life (Time of India 20 March 2010)

Yamuna can’t be clean if minimum stipulated flow is not maintained

Never mind the thousands of crores being sunk to clean up the Yamuna. Can it ever become a clean stream if it doesn’t get a steady supply of fresh water and instead gets drain-loads of sewage discharged into it?
It doesn’t require any special knowledge of waterways to answer the question. It’s, of course, NO. And yet hardly anyone is focusing on the fact that the Yamuna is starved of fresh water the moment it enters Delhi’s boundaries, upstream of Wazirabad.
At the Hathnikund Barrage, north of Wazirabad, the river water is diverted into two canals — the eastern Yamuna canal and the western Yamuna canal. The river here is literally sucked dry, its tiniest drop taken out for Delhi’s water requirement.
The next 22-km journey is a nightmare for the Yamuna with tonnes of human and industrial waste being dumped into it. Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), in an affidavit submitted to court in 1999, said: ‘‘Even if the sewage and industrial effluent presently under various stages of control under the GAP (Ganga action plan) and YAP (Yamuna action plan) are fully treated, the water quality objectives as defined under designated best use criteria of CPCB cannot be achieved in the absence of natural flow in the rivers.’’
The CPCB designated that a minimum flow of 10 cumecs or 864 million litres per day should be maintained in the river as ecological flow. However, this agreement between the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi was maintained only in its breach.
The river has an annual average flow of 12 billion kilolitres and three fourths of it flows during the monsoon. Delhi, which was allocated 724 million kilolitres water in 1994 by the Central Water Commission (CWC), believes that this water should be released to it equally through the year.
The Delhi Jal Board says that Haryana is not even releasing enough water for the city’s drinking needs and hence there is little chance that it would adhere to agreements on keeping the river clean.
‘‘About 95% of the river’s water goes for irrigation and agricultural use. Only 5% or so comes to cities. Most of the 724 million kilolitres of water allocated to us by CWC comes during the monsoon months of July-October. Between March and June, the heaviest months in terms of demand, we get only about 70 million kilolitre. This imbalance has been corrected very slightly by the SC in view of the uniformity of demand of urban areas across various seasons,’’ said Santosh Vaidya, additional CEO, DJB.
In 1996, the Supreme Court had ordered Haryana to ensure that the Wazirabad pond level be maintained at a minimum of 674.5 feet, irrespective of how much water the state released. That order of the apex court is frequently disregarded.
‘‘Haryana needs a lot of water for its irrigation purposes, especially during the summer months when its kharif crop is getting ready. At such times, there is often a tussle between the states on water. Very often the level of the Wazirabad pond drops and supply to several parts of Delhi has to be curtailed. It is not surprising that the Yamuna resembles a river only in the monsoon season when there is surplus water flowing through it,’’ said a senior DJB official.
This is also the reason why officials are pushing for a dam upstream so that the excess monsoon flows can be trapped and released slowly through the year. However, the environment implications of that suggestion are yet to be studied.
Environmentalists have long been asking states to take their responsibility seriously, especially as in a city like Delhi, where even after the interceptor sewage system is in place, all its sewage will not get treated. In its affidavit to the court, DJB had accepted even after the system, restoring the river to class-C bathing quality would be posssible only ‘‘if adequate quantity of fresh water is released by the Upper Yamuna River Board’’.
Says water activist Rajendra Singh: ‘‘The Yamuna is not a perennial river and needs to be allowed to revive itse lf. It can never be clean, despite what any government may do, unless there is fresh water in it to dilute the sewage that we release into it regularly.’’
Desired flow of fresh water in the Yamuna
864
million litres
per day Actual average flow
of water in the river
12
billion kilolitres
annually Delhi’s annual
allocation
724
million kilolitres
Average annual water
consumption in Delhi
225
litres
per capita Estimated Demand in 2021
6,272
million litres per day
DJB’s estimates

NOT A MIRAGE The river just before Wazirabad. Once it’s tapped for our water supply, it becomes a trickle