Yamuna Cleaning

Last updated: 18 May 2024

By Dec 2023, Delhi has planned to achieve this milestone of 813 MGD of sewage treatment capacity, targeted to increase to to 964.5MGD by June 2024
-- Plans derailed after Services control by BJP

AAP has made a commitment to clean the Yamuna to bathing standards by February 2025[1]

-- Percentage of total sewerage that goes to river Yamuna untreated reduced from 26% in 2021 to 24.5% in 2022[2]
-- Average removal of sewage solids in pollution load into Yamuna increased from 36.04 TPD(Tons per day) to 40.86 TPD[2:1]

What are the Plans to achieve this?

1. New STP construction & Upgrade existing STPs

2. Tapping & Cleaning of Drains

Total 22 Drains outfall into river Yamuna including waste water coming into Najafgarh Drain from Haryana and coming into Shahdara Drain from Uttar Pradesh[3]
-- 10 Drains have been tapped as of November 2023
-- 02 Drains are partially tapped
-- 02 Large Drains (Najafgarh & Shahdara) substatially tapped

April 2022: 405 out of 453 sub-drains outfalling into Najafgarh Supplementary and Shahdara drain are tapped[2:2]

In-situ treatment zones

These will be created at 10 places in Najafgarh/Supplementary and Shahdara drains[4]

In-situ methods include:

  • Floating booms
  • Weirs (kind of small dam)
  • Aeration device
  • Floating wetland
  • Chemical dosing at some strategic locations to reduce phosphate content which causes froth in water[4:1]



3. Laying Sewer lines[5]

Update: March 2024

No. Colonies Total Colonies Colonies with Sewerage System
1. Un-authorized Regularized Colonies 567 557
2. Urban Village 135 130
3. Rural Village 219 55
4. Un-authorized Colonies 1799 783
5. Resettlement Colonies 44 44
  • Around 90% of untreated wastewater from households pours into the river[6]
  • To stop this, Delhi government is working to install sewer lines in unauthorised colonies and improving the sewer network across Delhi[7]
  • 383 out of 683 JJ clusters have already been trapped and sewage treated[2:3]
  • Over 4 lakh households have already been connected, and 571 jhuggi-jhopri clusters have been tapped[^6]

4. Desilting of trunk sewer[7:1]

  • PWD (Public Work Department) is also getting the desilting done so that silt of supplementary drains does not go into the Najafgarh drain
  • PWD is working to repair culverts built on Najafgarh drain

Background

Yamuna Action Plan 1993 (YAP) to restore the river with a bilateral project between governments of India and Japan, ₹1,500 crore was spent on the YAP, and a plan of ₹1,174 crore was redrawn, but the scheme failed [8]

  • Najafgarh drain is actually the Sahibi River. During the last decades in the capital, the Sahibi River has been identified as Najafgarh drain[7:2]
  • The 22-km stretch of the river between Wazirabad and Okhla, which is less than 2% of the river length, accounts for around 80% of its pollution

References:

  1. https://news.abplive.com/delhi-ncr/delhi-several-major-yamuna-cleaning-projects-running-behind-schedule-in-delhi-says-report-1637017#:~:text=The Delhi government has made,than five milligrams per litre. ↩︎

  2. https://ddc.delhi.gov.in/sites/default/files/multimedia-assets/outcome_budget_2022-23.pdf ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. https://delhiplanning.delhi.gov.in/sites/default/files/Planning/chapter_8.pdf ↩︎

  4. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/delhi/story/delhi-government-5-point-action-plan-to-clean-yamuna-by-2025-2357222-2023-04-07 ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. https://delhiplanning.delhi.gov.in/sites/default/files/Planning/chapter_13.pdf ↩︎

  6. https://www.indiatimes.com/explainers/news/sources-of-pollution-in-yamuna-567324.html ↩︎

  7. https://www.cityspidey.com/news/20134/delhi-jal-board-to-upgrade-all-its-stps-and-increase-their-capacity-in-18-months ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. https://www.dnaindia.com/delhi/report-rs-1515-crore-spent-on-yamuna-conservation-minister-satya-pal-singh-2698588 ↩︎