New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said that there has been a significant improvement in the availability of drinking water in Delhi, especially in the summer seasons for the last two years. He said that the Delhi government had developed a detailed plan to further improve drinking water availability in the Capital. Cabinet Minister Satyendra Jain, who is also heading the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) said the priority of the government will be to provide 24-hour water supply and clean the Yamuna river and the sewers in Delhi. Departments like, Water, Industries, Public Works Department (PWD), Power, Home, Urban Development (UD) and Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) will be headed by Jain for the next five years. Former technical advisor to the Chief Minister of Delhi on water, Ankit Srivastava said, "There are multiple agencies and different stakeholders involved in the cleaning up of the Yamuna. It is very difficult to fix the accountability of any one department. For example, all the major drains that carry pollutants to the river are under I&FC department but the pollutants which they carry belongs to Delhi Jal Board. DJB says we cannot touch the drain because it is not our land hence we are not accountable for it. I&FC says we cannot treat the pollutants flowing in the drain because it is not our waste, it is coming from other sources. This has been going on for the past 25-30 years." Now, all these co-dependent departments have been consolidated under one minister, who will oversee Delhis journey to becoming self-sufficient in terms of freshwater supply, Srivastava added. Jain said, "You will consider cleaning of Yamuna when there is zero discharge of the sewer waste into the river. Our target is to reduce sewer waste by 25 per cent each year and in three to four years we would have cleaned it properly." Advisor to the government of NCT Delhi, Roshan Shankar said, "Now you look at the whole picture and chalk out plans accordingly. This allows different departments to interact with each other and do more outcome-oriented projects, which reduces the cost of problem-solving as well." Srivastava added that the Delhi government is looking for sustainable measures to create additional freshwater sources. "One of the major sources is the treated water from the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). We have spent revenue on the infrastructure for sewage treatment. We have around 500 mgd supply which is roughly 50 per cent of Delhis water demand. 500 mgd of clean treated water coming from the STP going into the drain and getting polluted again. That quantity can be used in different ways for replacing the freshwater demand and hence reducing the water consumption which we are relying on now." There are multiple pockets in Delhi from where water can be used by treating it with appropriate technology. "We have in-house renewable sources, Yamuna floodplain is one of those. Multiple studies show that there is a potential to extract around 80 to 100 mgd from the floodplain itself which will be replenished when there are monsoons or floods. It has not been extracted because you have new kind of pollutants that have contaminated that water supply as well," added Srivastava. In a year, Yamuna contains excess water on over 105 days, which can be effectively tapped. The stretch of Yamuna floodplains has very high recharge potential, which can be maximised by excess floodwater during monsoons. The project involves the creation of water bodies to store water and promote groundwater recharge along the floodplains, said Srivastava. Under the project "Making Yamuna a Water Bank", Rs 77,000 per acre is expected to be given to farmers who lease their land for the project. The pilot project has reportedly shown interesting results with groundwater levels increasing even after regular extraction of 20 mgd water by the DJB through bore wells along the Yamuna floodplains.

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