Reinvigorating Yamuna

Continuing with the existing approach will not help

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s new six-point action plan to clean the Yamuna by 2025 is essentially a rehash of strategies that have already been tried out in the past without much success. It involves stock measures like expansion of sewage treatment capacity, crackdown on industries discharging untreated wastes, provision of sewer connections in unauthorised settlements, and desilting of drains that flow into the river. It lacks some of the basic imperatives for sustaining river health. 

The Yamuna, evidently, is the lifeline of several urban centres located along its 1,400-kms route spanning five states — Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Roughly, around 60 million people rely on Yamuna water for their sustenance. For the National Capital, it is of particular avail as it meets 70 per cent of its water requirement. Besides, it is the key tributary of the Ganga, which it joins at Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh. Unfortunately, the quality of Yamuna water has been going from bad to worse, notwithstanding a series of moves over the past three decades to avert this degradation. The first major programme to rejuvenate this river — the 10-year Yamuna Action Plan-1 — came up way back in 1993 with Japanese collaboration. This was extended further in 2003 and also supplemented with other initiatives like the interceptor sewer project (2006), Nirmal Yamuna (Revitalisation) Project (2017), and various works carried out under the flagship Namami Gange Project. None of these has shown any positive outcome. 

Unsurprisingly, the river hit the headlines recently due to the emergence of a huge mass of froth because of an influx of unprocessed wastes containing detergents and toxic chemicals. Earlier, the domestic water supply in a large part of Delhi was hit because the water purification plants could not cope with the high ammonia content of the water. The Yamuna’s piteous state is attributable, indeed, to Delhi’s failure to keep it in good shape. Though hardly about 2 per cent (22 kms) of the river’s total course passes through Delhi, it gathers close to 80 per cent of its pollutants in this stretch. The city’s sewage treatment capacity is grossly inadequate, aside from being incapable of the task due to the use of outmoded technology. The water coming out of the sewage treatment units is often wanting in quality. It is usually unfit even for bathing. Many industries in the Capital territory do not have effluent treatment plants of their own; nor are they linked with the common effluent treatment facilities set up in some, not all, industrial clusters. Unplanned habitations have also come up along the river and, more regrettably, in its flood plain and riverbed itself. Their waste goes directly into the river. All this needs to stop. 

What is sorely missing in all the bids to reinvigorate the Yamuna is due emphasis on ensuring the much-needed minimum water flow, technically called ecological flow, without which no strategy, however well-planned, can succeed. This, no doubt, requires cooperation of all the riparian states. Besides, the outdated technology now in vogue in the existing water treatment plants needs to be upgraded urgently. Ideally, the treated sewage should not go back into the river but be recycled for non-domestic use. All these issues merit urgent attention to save the Yamuna from decaying.