40 surgeries put off due to water shortage in Delhi (Times of India 25 June 2012)

At Bara Hindu Rao, the largest municipal hospital in the city, more than 40 surgeries were cancelled over the past week because water could not be arranged for the procedures.

NEW DELHI: The severe water shortage in the city has begun to take a toll on urgent health services. At Bara Hindu Rao, the largest municipal hospital in the city, more than 40 surgeries were cancelled over the past week because water could not be arranged for the procedures.

Doctors at the hospital said there was no water to sterilize instruments, wash the operation theatre, clean the linen and wash hands - without which surgeries could not be conducted.

At other hospitals such as Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Ambedkar and Safdarjung, patients said they were having to buy water from outside for most of their needs as hospital taps ran dry. Washing and cleaning, a vital function in hospitals to prevent infections, has mostly been abandoned at many institutions.

Toilets were stinking at a number of hospitals and doctors on night duty said they were having to carry their drinking water because there was no water in the wards.

At Bara Hindu Rao, the worst days were Monday and Tuesday. "We had to reschedule some routine surgeries but emergency services were not affected. We called in water tankers to manage the problem. The supply has been restored now," said Dr Ravi Gupta, additional medical superintendent of Bara Hindu Rao Hospital.

A senior gynaecologist at the hospital said 10 surgeries in the department were cancelled on Monday and Tuesday. "The patients were asked to come later," she said.

Another doctor added, "As it is, the waiting period for operations in departments such as urology, surgery and orthopedics has gone up because the main OT has been partially closed since January for repairs. The water crisis will aggravate the problem."

Doctors said they are giving preference to emergency cases and to outstation patients. Sources said Bara Hindu Rao witnesses water crisis every year during the peak summer, but this time the shortage was more acute because of the Wazirabad water treatment plant not receiving its quota of raw water from Haryana. "The government and hospital authorities should make arrangements for uninterrupted supply," a doctor said.

Dr Promila Gupta, medical superintendent at Deen Dayal Upadhyaya hospital, said the hospital has been facing water problems for more than a month. "No emergency services have been affected. But yes there is a problem," Gupta said.

A resident doctor at Safdarjung hospital said doctors were having to carry their drinking water during night duty. "There is no facility of clean drinking water in the wards and patients have to buy water from outside," he said.

At the 64-bedded B R Sur homeopathic medical college and hospital in south Delhi's Moti Bagh, patients said water supply to the toilets was irregular. Hospital authorities said they are managing the daily needs through tankers.
The Delhi Jal Board attributes the severe shortage in the city to curtailment of raw water supply by Haryana to the Haiderpur and Wazirabad treatment plants.

No water shortage, but no water (New Indian Express The Sunday Standard 24 June 2012)

There’s enough water to go around for every Delhiite, but the city is parched. Blame the tanker mafia and DJB’s black-hole pipelines. (Photo: Ram Choudhary)

Don’t believe the government. There’s no water shortage in Delhi. The scarcity is totally artificial—a result of administrative mismanagement, water burglary, misuse, and the tanker mafia acting in collusion with politicians with business interests.

Delhi has more than enough water for the personal consumption needs of its 1.65 crore residents. The math is simple: the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) pumps 850 million gallons of treated water into its water pipelines every day. The raw water for the capital’s four functional treatment plants is sourced mostly from the Yamuna, Ganga, and Sutlej rivers via Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. That means every individual can be supplied about 200 litres of water—about 10 regular buckets.

That’s only about half of it. About 600 MGD of water with the DJB is “grey”, or reusable. Add that to the per capita figure, and every Delhiite should get about 330 litres of water per day; about 65 buckets of water for a family of four, almost two-thirds of it treated. By either figure, Delhi is surely one of the world’s water-surplus cities. The average Singapore citizen uses a measly 150 litres of water a day, a Londoner uses 170 litres, and Germany’s per capita daily consumption is just 122 litres. By our own standards, Delhi is well ahead of the 135 litres per person per day that Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO) thinks is ideal.

The city has a network of water pipes measuring almost 10,000 km. So poor is the condition that almost half of the water pumped into it is lost. The network doesn’t even reach half of the city’s burgeoning population. Hotels and commercial establishments use up a significant amount of the water supplied, DJB officals say in defence, offering figures of up to a third of the total. Such a large quantity of water going down the commercial hole may need more than a pinch of salt to believe in, but even if true, it would still leave the average Delhiite with enough water.

Why then does Delhi go all thirsty and sweaty every summer? The answer can be given in three Ms: Mismanagement, Misuse, and Mafia. “Delhi is not in need of any more water, rather it has been overprovided with water. It just has to properly manage all the water it has. Delhi only needs to manage its existing water supply in a equitable manner. This will require cost, and the capital would have to overhaul its pipeline network. It will need to have functional sewage and water treatment plants. Not enough funds are being pumped towards this purpose.”

Water mafia milks dry Delhi for big bucks (New Indian Express The Sunday Standard 24 June 2012)

The city would have enough water if its pipelines didn’t leak, and if there was no tanker mafia making money off the scarcity. “Delhi needs to invest its funds if the problem has to be solved,” says Manoj Mishra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan. Mishra says that currently Delhities use fresh water for all purposes. But fresh water is needed for drinking, not for watering plants, flushing toilets or bathing. A policy decision was taken by the Sheila Dikshit government to recycle water in 1999, but it has remained just that, a policy statement. “In the summer seasons some areas of the city do not get water. And then all kinds of excuses are provided by the state government about Haryana not supplying enough water. They are trying to shift the blame,” says Mishra.

What’s getting obfuscated in all this fingerpointing is the water mafia. Tankers rush in where DJB doesn’t bother to tread, furiously sucking up groundwater to sell at exorbitant rates, anything between Rs 1,500 and 4,000 per 10,000-litre tanker. Time and again allegations have been levelled about a ‘nexus’ between certain vested interests and politicians who ensure that water supply to an area is disrupted so that the tanker mafia can move in make hay while the water taps go dry. At these rates and consumption figures that go up to 400 litres per capita in the city’s tony neighbourhoods, this tanker business has a annual turnover that runs into thousands of crores. The water business is a cow too rich to be left unmilked, and local muscle, including the legislative variety, has cornered this lucrative business across the city. Private tankers brazenly fill up at DJB boosting stations across the city, and it’s an open secret that some of the pipelines are damaged on purpose just so this business goes on as usual. And everyone, from senior politicans to street-level activists, fears them, naming them but keeping their own names secret. Haryana can’t be the fall guy; the state supplies Delhi with water at the flow rate of  610 cusecs. Besides, there are 900 water bodies in the city and no less than 400 wetlands, according to a survey carried out by NGO Tapas. The Delhi Government surveys peg the number of water bodies in the city at 629. A 2011 report of the Delhi government’s environment department says: “Most of the water bodies are village ponds located in the revenue area of the villages. The village ponds are mostly created water bodies having very small localized catchments for gathering rainwater. Most ponds present a picture of neglect. Some of the ponds have become absorbed in the urban areas or village abadi area where they have been used to discharge local waste waters and thus become cesspools. A few lakes remain. Most prominent are Bhalaswa lake, a freshwater lake on river floodplain. Another is Sanjay lake in East Delhi. Najafgarh Jheel which used to be largest lake in the area now mainly lies on the Haryana side of the interstate border. Jehangirpuri Marshes are the largest water body in Delhi.”

Water harvesting, recycling and other such strategies can help parched Delhi, but the elephant in the room is the mismanagement of the water compounded by misuse and overuse, and exploited by the water mafia. Till these three Ms are addressed, Delhi’s water  troubles are only going to get worse.

Water shortage persists in parts of Capital (Hindu 21 June 2012)

Various areas in the Capital continue to face a water shortage though the situation has improved marginally with neighbouring Haryana releasing more water for Delhi.

Delhi Jal Board officials said the Haiderpur treatment plant, which supplies water to various areas in West and South Delhi, could not produce water to its optimum capacity due to shortage of raw water.

However, they said Haryana has released more water to Delhi as per decision taken at a meeting between Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and her Haryana counterpart Bhupinder Singh Hooda. “The Haiderpur water treatment plant could not treat water to its optimum level due to shortage of raw water,” the officials said.

With Delhi complaining about cut in supply of water by Haryana, the Water Resources Ministry has deployed engineers from the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the Upper Yamuna Board at the sites from where Haryana releases water to Delhi to check the veracity of the claims. Similarly, engineers have been posted at sites in Delhi which receive water from the neighbouring States.

Jal Board, Singapore ink agreement on sharing waste water treatment expertise (Hindu 21 June 2012)

Delhi on Wednesday signed an agreement with Singapore to set up waste water treatment plants that will generate ‘new water’ for the city’s consumption. ‘New Water’ as it is popularly called is treated sewage and waste water that is being increasingly used in cities where water is in short supply.

The waste water is treated extensively and made fit for use. Singapore has an expertise in setting up ‘new water’ plants and is considered a successful model of waste water recycling and reuse.

The city’s water supplier, the Delhi Jal Board, has been proposing to set up ‘new water’ plants here to reduce the gap between demand and supply.

On Wednesday the water utility signed an agreement with the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE) and Temasek Foundation, Singapore (TF), to share their experience in planning and design of recycle and reuse of treated sewage and wastewater on a public private partnership (PPP) basis.

Co-funded

The programme will be supported by Temasek Foundation with a grant amount of SGD $463,149 and co-funded by the DJB. Under the partnership a water reclamation plant of 40 MGD will be set up at the Coronation Pillar plant and benefit three to four million consumers.

According to a DJB official, under the grant agreement, the programme will provide advisory and a series of capacity building activities to assist the DJB in achieving an in-depth understanding on the benefits and challenges for developing an integrated and holistic water management framework.

“This includes recycle and reuse of treated sewage and wastewater and sharing the experiences and lessons learnt from Singapore with the development of policy frameworks and actions required to implement water recycling strategies,” said the official.

Referring to the need for alternatives like ‘new water’, the DJB official said: “The population of Delhi has increased from 9.4 million in 1991 to 16.3 million in 2011. There has been an ever-increasing pressure on its existing water resources. With the population projected to grow to 23 million by 2021, the water scarcity scenario remains a real concern.”

It was pointed out that since Singapore has tackled similar water scarcity issues through its highly successful ‘new water programme’, and set a benchmark in the implementation of recycle and reuse projects for indirect potable and direct non-potable application, the DJB is keen to tap into Singapore’s experience.

The grant agreement was signed by Debashree Mukherjee, Chief Executive Officer of DJB, and Alphonsus Chia, Chief Executive Officer of Singapore Cooperation Enterprise, in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Jonathon Tow, Singapore Acting High Commissioner to India, and Benedict Cheong, Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Foundation.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Dikshit said there was a need to “adopt the mantra of the three “Rs” -- reduce, recycle and reuse to become self-sustainable.”

·  To be supported by Temasek Foundation’s grant amount of SGD $463,149

·  Water reclamation plant of 40 MGD to be set up at Coronation Pillar plant