Water supply hit in parts of Delhi, Okhla plant reopened

Several areas across the partially inundated Capital were hit by water supply shortages on Friday — with taps running dry in some places — as two flooded treatment facilities remained shut, while operations resumed at the Okhla plant in the evening.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said that some water supply challenges were likely to persist over the weekend with floodwater receding slowly.

On Friday, the most-affected areas were in the city’s north and west, while the tail-end areas in various south Delhi localities also reported some water supply issues. The daily water supply to New Delhi region was also down to a third and tanker requests shot up 10 times their usual demand, the New Delhi Municipal Council said. DJB officials said tankers were deployed at impacted areas.

While the swollen Yamuna’s water level receded to 207.98 at 11pm on Friday from Thursday’s 208.61m (11pm),pump houses and equipment at three of the nine water treatment plants operated by DJB — Wazirabad, Chandrawal and Okhla — were not working till Friday evening. These plants account for 245 of the 998 million gallons per day of the Capital’s daily water requirement, according to DJB.

At around 6pm, operations resumed at the Okhla plant, overseen by CM Arvind Kejriwal. He also inspected the Wazirabad facility later.

Kejriwal said, “Three of our WTPs had shut yesterday – the one at Chandrawal, Wazirabad and Okhla. Today the water levels in the Yamuna river have decreased and Okhla WTP has again become functional. The water level of the Yamuna is 208.2m and by tomorrow morning if the water level of the river comes down to even 207.7m, then hopefully by tomorrow we will be able to dry out the remaining two WTPs and get them to be functional as well.” “When the water levels go down, it will take 24 hours to dry these machines to run them safely,” the CM added.

Apart from these plants, 25-30% production was also impacted at the Sonia Vihar plant, while all the ranney collector wells and tubewells along the Yamuna floodplains were also submerged. Due to this, the total daily water supply was reduced by nearly a third — officials from DJB said that Delhi was short by around 330 MGD.

A majority of complaints over water supply poured in from north and west Delhi, and tail end parts of South Delhi, prompting a rush for bottled water in some neighbourhoods.

Mukesh Aggarwal, general secretary of Model Town Lake area RWA, said that water was not supplied to the region at all. “We have bought five canned water bottles to store for the next couple of days but this crisis will boil over if supply is not restored,” he said.

In areas such as Vasant Kunj, the supply quantum was less but the situation was under control, residents said.

The water crisis reached to the Lutyens’ Delhi too, with the area under NDMC being supplied around a third of its normal water supply.

A DJB official said that around 302 tankers were deployed in Rohini, Ashok Vihar, Punjabi Bagh, Mandwali, Paschim Vihar, GK, Okhla industrial area and Chhatarpur.