How Delhi is trying to turn a drain into a river

Last week, L-G V K Saxena and National Green Tribunal Chairman Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel took a boat ride along the drain for a joint inspection of rejuvenation efforts

Last week, L-G V K Saxena and National Green Tribunal Chairman Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel took a boat ride along the drain for a joint inspection of rejuvenation efforts. The management of the Najafgarh jheel, an ecologically significant wetland and bird habitat, is being monitored by the NGT.

The plan

Considering the length it covers and the large number of smaller drains that meet it, cleaning the Najafgarh drain includes everything from improving the sewerage network in many parts of the city, ensuring that existing sewage treatment plants meet norms for treated water, setting up additional sewage treatment plants, and keeping garbage away from the river, according to a senior Delhi Jal Board (DJB) official.

In his budget speech last year, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had said that the drain will be developed as a tourist destination and that the Sahibi river will be “brought back”. The budget allocation for the Najafgarh drain was Rs 705 crore.

A start has been made with efforts to clean a 11.38-km stretch of the drain from Basai Darapur to Timarpur in North Delhi, which is not far from where it meets the Yamuna.

An official of the Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) department in-charge of the project said that “partial desilting” of the drain is being done with around 20 boats that are fitted with “rakers” that rake up the silt and carry it with the flow of the drain towards the Yamuna. A small stretch of around 2.3 km from near Mall Road to Timarpur is likely to be inaugurated later this month and a recreational boating service is likely to be launched, the official said. The possibility of using the drain to transport goods is also on the anvil, but plans have not been finalised, he added.

The challenges

The challenge with the Najafgarh drain is also the historical sludge that has accumulated in the drain along with management of solid waste, the DJB official said.
Cleaning of waste that lies along the banks of the drain is also underway. The I&FC department official said that around 1,800 tonnes of solid waste was cleared from the banks and handed over to the MCD, but heaps of waste still remain along the banks of the drain.

“With both sewage from areas without a sewer network, and industrial effluents being a source of pollution of the drain, the DJB is in charge of dealing with the drains that fall into the Najafgarh drain and the DSIIDC will have to deal with industrial effluents,” the I&FC official added.

“There are 126 drains that meet the Najafgarh drain, and the roughly 12 km between Timarpur and Basai Darapur where work is underway has around 52 smaller drains that meet it,” he said.

Along a little more than 5 km between Timarpur and Bharat Nagar, there are 32 inlets, of which 10 are storm water or dry inlets and five have been intercepted or trapped. The remaining 17 have not been intercepted yet, data with the I&FC department shows.

The DJB official said, “The objective is to treat all the sewage before it reaches the Najafgarh drain. Of the 126 drains falling into Najafgarh drain, the DJB in the first instance has taken up trapping of 47 drains. Some drains have been trapped under the interceptor sewer project and some are dry. STPs based on old design parameters are being upgraded in a phased manner and work has been awarded in three packages so far.” A total of 40 decentralised STPs are likely to come up, some within the Najafgarh drainage zone itself and others in the northwest and west areas — for some, land has been allotted but for some land is yet to be allocated, the official added.

The Najafgarh drain has a flow or discharge of around 452 MGD (million gallons per day). Of this, around 252 MGD is treated effluent from STPs and 105 MGD is being discharged from Haryana through two drains including the Badshahpur drain, according to data with the DJB.

The drain is, therefore, heavily polluted. A report submitted by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to the NGT last October on the mass death of fish in the Najafgarh drain had pointed to outfall drains from Gurgaon and Delhi that carry “huge quantity” of silt, sewage, industrial effluent and solid waste. The in-situ treatment of major drains and “selective dredging” without disturbing bird habitats to restore the natural flow of inflowing drains, and removal of water hyacinth in the Najafgarh drain are part of the plan for management of the Najafgarh jheel.

Manu Bhatnagar, principal director of the natural heritage division at INTACH, said, “The 1865 excavation of Sahibi nadi downstream of Najafgarh Jheel earned it the name of Najafgarh drain. The river used to function during the monsoon, feeding the Najafgarh jheel all the way from north of Jaipur. To ensure that it is navigable, you first need clean water in the drain, beautiful banks and depth. Intercepting the drains that flow into it could also reduce the draft in the Najafgarh drain and that will have to be considered. The water through the bed of the drain recharges the aquifers.”