Water body audit on the cards, Delhi forms committee
NEW DELHI: The State Wetland Authority (SWA) has constituted an expert committee to audit the list of over 250 water bodies, which land-owning agencies had requested to be “deleted” from the master list of 1,043 water bodies.
The move came after L-G Anil Baijal last month had objected to deletion of the water bodies, which were lost because of construction or encroachment. Baijal had asked the SWA to constitute a panel with at least two subject experts to look into the matter. If the committee recommends that a water body cannot be revived, it will be deleted, he had said.
According to officials, the nine-member panel has experts on wetlands, environmental studies and urban planning, among others to carry out the audit. “Various teams were formed to re-inspect the sites for deletion. They will start inspections from Friday onwards and look into the major reasons, including encroachment, permanent fixtures having come up or dried up naturally, for non-existence of the water bodies in question,” said a senior official.
The panel will study the reasons and recommend whether a water body could be restored or needs to be removed from the official list. “It will devise an SOP for auditing the list of water bodies requested to be deleted from the list and propose timelines for the completion of the task,” the official said.
The SWA had identified, geo-tagged these water bodies for conservation and restoration, after the high court in 2018 had asked the government how it plans to conserve the over 1,000 water bodies in Delhi.
Prof C R Babu, the panel head, said the reasons behind the disappearance of water bodies need to be studied in detail. “It is a detailed task. We need to find out, as already discussed earlier, whether buildings have come up where the water bodies once stood, if these structures are legal or not and if these could be razed and water bodies could be revived.”
Faiyaz A Khudsar, scientist in-charge of the Yamuna Biodiversity Park, said it was crucial to ascertain the actual status of these water bodies not just for the ecology but also to address the ever increasing water-deficit in the city. ‘
‘Most of the city is using underground water, which is depleting fast and needs to be recharged. These water bodies can help recharge groundwater and address water problems in the city,” he asserted.
TEAM MEMBERS
- C R Babu, head of the Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems, DU
- Faiyaz A Khudsar, biodiversity expert
- P S N Rao, director, School of Planning and Architecture
- Ritesh Kumar, director, Wetlands International South Asia (WISA)
- Prof Radhey Shyam Sharma, Dept of environmental studies, DU
- Abhishek Kumar, urban planner, INTACH.