“Within the next 4-5 years we would be able to give 24 hour water supply in Delhi, when we came to power in 2015 only 58% of households were covered by tap water service, the rest had to depend on water tankers, today 93% of the households have been covered by tap water. Apart from forest area colonies and areas under ASI all Delhi households have been covered by piped network” said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, he was speaking at a talk on ‘Conservation of Water’ in New Delhi Niti Bagh Club recently.
Kejriwal explained his plans as to how he would make Delhi water independent and ensure 24 hour water supply “Delhi does not have its own water, we take water from Haryana and UP with Haryana we have an is ongoing court case for 150 cusecs of water. During monsoons water so abundant that Haryana has to release 600,000 cusecs of water into the Yamuna every day, yet we fight for 150 cusecs of water. If we are able to divert this water and effectively store it as groundwater all water problems of Delhi would be solved. I am not saying this IIT Delhi study says this, so we have undertaken a small pilot project where we have taken about 40 acres of land besides the Yamuna and got it dug up. The pit prepared by us is 1 meter deep, under this thin layer of soil, their lies sand through which water would percolate down. The sand zone is 30 meters deep running for several kilometers. When the Yamuna gets inundated due to rains and when Yamuna would overflow water would stand at the pit for a while after which it would seep into the sand. This year we would measure the speed of percolation of water, next year we would acquire 1500 acres of land. Within the coming 3-4 years we would be able to double water availability in Delhi everyone’s home should have rainwater harvesting system which we into to install all in one everyone’s house.”
