New Delhi: Delhi government’s ambitious project to tap Yamuna rainwater to recharge groundwater is all set to take off. Senior officials said the final approval from the principal committee of National Green Tribunal is expected on Monday when a Delhi government team will make a presentation on the project. “This is chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s dream project to make Delhi self-reliant for its water needs and he is monitoring it in real-time,” said an official.
Delhi Jal Board officials said the government already has the mandatory approvals from Upper Yamuna River Board, Central Ground Water Board, National Mission for Clean Ganga and two monitoring committees. The reports prepared by the expert institutions have also been shared with the governments of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh for their technical inputs.
The approval from NGT’s principal committee is the last statutory requirement that the government has to fulfil. Officials said Delhi government has quoted previous recommendations of NGT and various technical committees where it is mentioned that these kind of activities should be taken up to store rainwater as it will not only help the river, but recharge groundwater as well.
“A separate team is working parallelly to sign a lease agreement with farmers. We have an in-house machinery to execute the project,” said an official.
Delhi government has proposed to create a 1,000-acre underground mega-reservoir in the Palla floodplain close to the DelhiUP border where excess rainwater will be stored for future use. Though the agencies are calling it a reservoir, the stored water will not look like a shallow lake but spread out on sand fields with shallow depressions all over the area.
The selected site lies between the Yamuna banks and embankment created by the irrigation and flood control department. It has a width of 200-600 metres. Officials said 18 flooding cycles occur every season when the water level goes above 208m, usually from the last week of August. With each cycle yielding 2,100 million gallons (MG) of water, we estimate that over 37,800MG water will be stored to be used in peak summer demand days in June the next year.
