Mishra reviews progress of floodwater harvesting project

Delhi Water minister Kapil Mishra, along with water experts and Delhi Jal Board (DJB) officials on Wednesday, reviewed progress of DJB’s floodwater harvesting project at Palla floodplains. 

With this project, DJB has so far started creating extra 10 million gallons water per day (MGD). The department is hoping that in next six months, the number of extra water will increase by up to 35 gallons per day. For further development, DJB has also planned to install a new reservoir in Palla by next year.

“The function of Palla project will be monitored by a central control room with automatic monitoring system to monitor water quality like arsenic, salinity, which will shut down tubewells if there is contamination,” water minister said.

This Palla floodplains is one of its kind water project, which was restarted by the Kejriwal-led Delhi government last year, calling it ‘Conserve and Use’ floodplain. The revival of this floodplain was the need of the hour, as entire Delhi had witnessed water crises during the Jat stir in Haryana couple of months back. As the national Capital is totally dependent on Haryana, to avert another water crisis in the Capital, DJB has decided to preserve extra water that can be used for at least one month in emergency period.

During inspection visit, it was decided that existing pipelines need to be properly prepared so that till the time new pipelines function, existing pipelines can deliver at least 28 MGD. New pipelines will have the capacity to carry at least 50 MGD water in future.

Mishra said: “Water would be drawn from the floodplains using about 105 tubewells and five ranney wells. Delhi has been dependent on Haryana and UP for its water and we faced a major crisis when the Munak canal crisis happened.”