‘Water shortage will be a thing of the past by 2010’

‘Water shortage will be a thing of the past by 2010’

Sanjay Kumar

Arun Mathur, the CEO of Delhi Jal Board, whose responsibility is to ensure that citizens of Delhi are never bereft of their daily supply of clean drinking water, tells TOI in an interview that Delhi would be free of all problems related to the availability of water in the next three years.
With the summer digging itself in, does Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has its task cut out?
Providing drinking water to an estimated current population of Delhi of 1.60 crore is a challenging task. Besides, DJB has to provide for another 5-6 lakh people, who make up the size of the migratory population that Delhi is host to. The DJB has to ensure that water is made available to everyone in the city in spite of the fact that Delhi’s own water requirements are not being made available to the city by the neighbouring states. Despite the constraints, DJB provides water to the entire city of Delhi, including people who are residing in the unauthorised colonies, slums, JJ clusters as well as urban and rural villages. Water is made available through deep bore handpumps, public hydrants, tubewells as well as tankers wherever the piped supply network has not been technically possible to extend so far.
What’s DJB doing to manage the disparity between water supply and demand?
In order not to depend entirely on external assistance, DJB has undertaken to maximise available resources by taking up construction of treatment plants to use recycled waste water at the existing water treatment plants of Haiderpur, Wazirabad, Bhagirathi and Chandrawal. This alone would provide an additional 45 MGD of water progressively from the end of May 2007 itself till April next year.
Why is Delhi never able to get over its water paucity problem and where does the solution lie?
As I said, handling water supply distribution in Delhi is not an easy task. Since almost 40% of Delhi was not really part of the planned development process and infrastructure had to catch up after colonies had already been developed, it became, at times, necessary to stretch network which would, normally, not be hydraulically a technically desirable option. Also, a substantial part of the 10,000 kms pipeline network is old and requires repair or replacement.
How does DJB plan to equip the city for meeting the escalated demand for water resources in the run up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games?
DJB is ready in all respects to meet the challenges which the 2010 Games will pose before the city, both in terms of improved water supply and better sewerage facilities. Not only would the Games Village be provided with state-of-art water treatment and sewage treatment facilities but the venues of all games will also have improved connectivity in this regard. Our aim is not to merely concentrate on gamesspecific locations but to ensure that the overall water supply and sewerage network for the whole city is revamped and is in good shape by 2010.
DJB executive gets award:
Sanjam Chima, adviser (PR) at DJB, was honoured with Super Achiever Award-2007 in the field of public relations by Shahnawaz Husain, former cabinet minister, at a function held in Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium recently.

Arun Mathur