NEW DELHI: Advancing the deadline for the cleaning of the Yamuna River in Delhi, Water Minister Satyendar Jain on Tuesday said the river will be completely cleaned by December 2023 and not 2025.All the wastewater in the national capital will be tapped in the next six months and all areas will be linked to the sewer network in the next 15 months, he said at a virtual session organised by Assocham.
“We will clean the river by December 2023 and not 2025. All the drains will be completely cleaned. We will invite you all to take a dip in any stretch of the river in Delhi,” he said.
Earlier, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the river will be cleaned by 2025. The minister also said that in the next five to ten years, the city’s groundwater table will be as good as it was 50 years ago.
“We conducted an experiment on 25 acres of land at Palla (on the northern outskirts of the capital near the Delhi-Haryana border)... It proved successful and we are replicating it now,” he said.
The Palla project was a part of the government’s endeavour to augment the city’s water supply. The three-year pilot project which started in 2019 involved retaining excess Yamuna water in shallow reservoirs on the floodplains during the monsoon season.
The government created a 25-acre pond on the floodplains of the Yamuna to retain floodwater and installed 33 piezometers to ascertain the rise in groundwater levels. Jain said considering the increase in drinking water supply, Delhi aims to achieve a sewage treatment capacity of around 1,000 million gallons a day in the near future.
According to Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officials, the utility will increase its wastewater treatment capacity by 57 per cent (326 million gallons a day) by June 2023.
The national capital generates around 744 million gallons of sewage a day, while the DJB supplies around 935 MGD of drinking water against the demand of 1,150 MGD.
The 35 sewage treatment plants operational at 20 locations across Delhi can treat up to 577 MGD of sewage and have been utilising around 90 per cent (514 MGD) of their capacity.
With PTI inputs