Renuka Dam Project to meet 40% of drinking water needs of Delhi

SHIMLA: Renukaji Dam Project in Himachal Pradesh, foundation stone of which was laid by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Mandi during his visit to the State on December 27th, 2021, has been designed to meet 40 per cent of the drinking water needs of NCR Delhi besides generating 40 MW of electricity.

Technical Advisory Committee of the Government of India had approved the cost of the project at Rs. 6946.99 crore in December 2019. In this, total cost of water component is Rs. 6647.46 crore and Government of India will bear 90 percent of expenditure of this component i.e. Rs 5982.72 crore.

The Project envisages construction of 148 meter high rock fill dam, which will store the monsoon discharge leading to formation of a 24 kms long reservoir. The Live Storage of dam will be 498 Million cubic meters which shall be used for supplying drinking water at 23 cubic meters per second to National Capital Territory of Delhi and it will fulfill about 40 percent of drinking water requirements of Delhi. It will also generate 200 Million units of energy in a surface power house with 40 MW installed capacity which shall be utilized by Government of Himachal Pradesh.

The construction of project is expected to start by December 2022 and will be completed in six years. The Project was conceived as a storage water project on Giri River in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The dam site is about 40 km away from Nahan, near famous Renukaji Shrine. To exploit the power potential of Giri River initial investigation work had been started by the then Government of Punjab way back in 1942. In the year 1964 Government of Himachal Pradesh started investigation on two projects and work on one of the projects i.e. Giri Hydroelectric Project was started in 1970s and completed in due course of time.

The Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the Renuka ji dam was accepted by Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of Department of Water Resources in the year 2000 for total price of Rs. 1224.64 crore. However, due to some reasons much progress could not be made on the project. DPR of the project was again accepted by TAC in the year 2015 with estimated cost of Rs 4596.76 crore. However due to non-signing of Interstate Agreement between beneficiary states, the work on project could not be initiated.