Delhi may get clean drinking water from Yamuna

Here is good news for denizens of New Delhi. After more than five years of experiments and research, a European Union river bank filtration (RBF) project has ignited new hopes of clean drinking water from the much-polluted Yamuna.

The “Saph Pani” project will be launched shortly from New Delhi with the assistance from the European Union. The Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan [UJS], which had successfully undertaken the riverbank filtration project in several areas of the hill state, would provide logistic support. “We are all hopeful that our project will become successful in Delhi also. The drinking water through this project will be as good as mineral water,” said P C Kimothi, secretary, appraisal, UJS.

Besides UJS, 20 other organisations including UNESCO, IIT Roorkee, National Institute of Hydrology (NIH) will also be involved in the project. In what is being seen as a breakthrough, scientists and engineers have successfully installed the riverbank filtration network at hilly areas like Nainital, Haridwar, Satpuli and Srinagar towns in Uttarakhand. In Nainital, the project is being given a shape of lake-filtration project to provide clean water from the Naini lake.

The RBF is an age-old European technique under which soil alongside rivers naturally removes harmful microbes and organic material as water passes through it. Through this process, the filtered groundwater is obtained from aquifers that are hydraulically connected to rivers and lakes. Wells are dug on the river banks to pump safe water out.

Significantly, most of the hilly areas in Uttarakhand, despite being home to India’s top rivers like Ganga and Yamuna, face severe drinking water problem as hundreds of rivulets and streams had dried up across the state. Despite spending crores of rupees every year, the government had not been able to provide a long-standing solution to the vexed problem. “We are glad to announce that we have made a breakthrough in riverbank filtration project at Satpuli and Srinagar which can now be replicated in other hilly areas also,” said Kimothi, who is also working on the project.

In 2006, IIT Roorkee joined hands with a Dresden university and Dusseldorf water company in Germany to start the project at Haridwar where they successfully removed the chemicals and impurities from the river water. The technique also got national urban water award 2009 from the Centre.