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Despite spending hundreds of crores on Yamuna cleaning projects over the past three decades, several manifesto promises and schemes, a large part of river stretch within Delhi continues to resemble a sewage canal.

The dissolved oxygen levels, an indicator of the river’s capacity to sustain aquatic life, remain zero while the bio-chemical oxygen demand or the BOD load has gone up from about 129 tonnes per day in 1982-83 to over 261 tonnes per day in 2019, show several scientific analysis of the river’s water over several years. The decay of organic matter in water is measured as biochemical or chemical oxygen demand.

The river watchers and experts point out that unless Delhi addresses its unplanned urban growth and works towards restoring the natural ecological flow of the river to allow the dilution of waste water between Wazirabad and Okhla, the chances of the situation getting better over next four years appear to be slim.

Professor Vikram Soni, a conservationist and emeritus professor at JNU, who has been working on issues related to Yamuna, pollution, said the political parties have been ad nauseam announcing projects about cleaning Yamuna over the last decades but nothing seems to change on ground. “The population of the city continues to grow in an unplanned manner and leading to increase wastewater generated by these settlements is going up. Several claims have been made in last 20 years but the river remains severely polluted. Removing industrial pollutants should be our immediate priority and all states need to pitch in,” he added.

He said the annual phenomenon of foaming in parts of Yamuna shows that the industrial pollutants, which should have been tackled long back, continue to flow freely in river. Last week, a thick layer of foam was formed over the river section flowing near the Okhla Barrage, and in some portion near ITO.

Under a six-point programme, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday announced that the sewage treatment capacity of STPs will be increased from existing 600MGD (million gallons per day) to 850 MGD, and new plants will be added to enhance capacity.

Delhi currently has a shortfall of around 151 MGD (million gallons a day) sewage treatment capacity while it is estimated that an additional 155 MGD wastewater comes from neighbouring states. The Centre for Science and Environment has argued that Delhi has possibly spent the highest amount of money on river cleaning in the country, but the pollution data indicates that little has changed in terms of water quality in the river.

Diwan Singh, an environmental activist who organised Yamuna Satyagrah for the river rejuvenation in 2007, said that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had promised to clean the Yamuna within five years of coming to power in its first term (2013) but the situation has only worsened. “The technical approach of all the governments has been the same. On the one hand, the city is growing at an abrupt pace in unplanned fashion. The target to tackle wastewater from unplanned areas and industries keeps changing. The same thing happened with the interceptor sewer project which continues to miss deadlines as new sources of sewage keep getting added,” Singh said.

Both central and state government as well as green tribunal and Supreme Court have ordered several projects to clean the river over the years. Yamuna Action Plan-1, which was one of the largest river restoration projects in India under the National River Conservation Plan, was launched in 1993 to increase the sewage treatment capacity and it lasted till 2003.

The Yamuna Action Plan -2 was initiated in 2003 while the interceptor sewer project was launched in 2006 on the directions of the Supreme Court. The basic idea behind the interceptor sewer lines is that a trunk sewer line running along the large drains would be able to intercept the smaller sewers and block them from meeting the main drains while diverting the raw sewage to treatment plants.

Besides YAP-1, YAP-2, projects under Namami Gange and Nirmal Yamuna Revitalisation Project (2017), several schemes have been announced with the aim of curbing pollution levels in the river.

Manoj Misra, the convener of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan a consortium of NGOs and individuals concerned for the river Yamuna which has been working for its revival for more than a decade, said while a multi-pronged approach is require to revitalise Yamuna, industrial pollution should be the immediate priority for the government.

“The river has itself spoken about the solution during the 2020 lockdown, when the water quality improved as the industries were shut and the flow in the river had increased due to good rainfall. Unless there is ecological flow in the river, no programmes will help,” he added.

Misra advocated zero liquid discharge policy for industries. Zero liquid discharge (ZLD) is wastewater management system that to ensure that there is no discharge of industrial wastewater into the environment. It is achieved by treating wastewater through recycling, recovery and reuse for industrial purpose.

A Delhi government official who asked not to be named said out of 33 industrial clusters in Delhi, 17 are connected to 13 CETPs (treatment plants). “Those drains whose wastewater does not go to a CETP will be tapped in the sewer line. If any industry does not properly dispose off its waste, it will be shut,” the official added.

The government has announced that the STP treatment capacity will be increased to 850MGD and the 19 existing plants will be upgraded to meet 10:10 (BOD:TSS) levels, but experts say that the solution for increasing the utilization of existing capacity should be the focus area.

Jyoti Sharma, head of FORCE- a Delhi based a water conservation and sanitation organization said that the under-utilization of STPs emphasizes that unplanned areas are not tapped and effluents are not reaching the treatment plants. “The action plan focuses on treatment. Decentralized STP should be our focus in JJ clusters and unauthorized colonies,” she added.

A senior Delhi Jal Board (DJB) official said a lot of progress has been made in the last five years and there was an urgent focus on Yamuna cleaning projects now. “DJB CEO Udit Prakash has visited all the 18 drain points in Yamuna in the last couple of days and individual localised solutions are being formulated for each site,” the official added.

He said the sewer network has been extended from 255 to 561 colonies in the past five years, and the number of sewer connections has also increased from 1.38 million to 2 million between 2016 and 2021.

“Three new STPs have been added to raise the treatment capacity by 55 MGD and over 158 MGD of waste water has been tapped by partial commissioning of interceptor project,” the official said. An action plan formulated by DJB stated that the water utility aims to increase the sewage network coverage to 986 unauthorised colonies by December 2022, 1,625 colonies by December 2023 and all 1,799 colonies by December 2024.

Prof Soni opined that tackling untreated sewage would take much longer time and investment worth tens of thousands of crores. “A large part of city’s unauthorized colonies are still not covered by sewage network. A large quantum of sewage from these areas still ends up in drains and river,” he added.

Soni says the “clean” Yamuna may be a pipe dream. “Let’s take the example of Rhine river in Germany. The Rhine has been cleaned, but the water still remains non-potable after five decades. Perhaps we should focus on achieving a less polluted Yamuna by 2025,” Prof Soni remarked.

Dr Suresh Kumar Rohilla, senior director-water programme, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said that the Delhi government needs to decentralise wastewater management and local reuse, as well as mainstreaming septage management as by the time they cover existing unsewered areas, new, unauthorised development will come up. “This catch-up game will continue unless we recognise this problem and plan citywide sanitation, moving away from sewage and centralised systems to sanitation for all,” Dr Rohilla said.

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