What’s happening to Delhi’s water bodies? 216 encroached upon, 77 not in use: Census data shows

The report counts 525 ponds (small water bodies) in the city, of which 66 were found to have been encroached, while out of the 14 lakes, (larger and deeper than ponds) that it identifies, none was encroached. The category of ‘others’ had the highest number of encroached water bodies — 149 out of 349. The report does not specify what sort of water bodies fall in the ‘others’ category.

The report defines water bodies as natural or man-made units that are bound on all sides and are used for storing water for irrigation or other purposes like groundwater recharge, religious, and industrial purposes. Most water bodies counted in Delhi have a water spread area of less than 0.5 hectares, while one was found to be in the 10- to 50-hectare range, and many water bodies (398 of the total water bodies) have a storage capacity of 0 to 100 cubic metres, which is the smallest storage capacity range that the report considers.

A total of 176 of the water bodies in Delhi have a much larger storage capacity of over 10,000 cubic metres.

On the encroached water bodies, environmentalist Diwan Singh, said, “We did a survey in 2011-12 in Southwest Delhi and found that 80% of encroachment was by government bodies… schools, parks. There is little effort to revive these water bodies. Involvement of the local communities is important in preserving and maintaining these water bodies, but the agencies that own these water bodies do not allow community work or participation. There is a scheme now to release treated water from sewage treatment plants into water bodies, but that water does not always meet quality standards,” he said. He pointed out that smaller water bodies like ponds are also important since they are spread out and can trap rain water, particularly run-off from paved areas. The status of water bodies in Delhi reported by a High Court-appointed committee after inspections from 2007 to 2012 had also found parks on encroached water bodies.

For the recently released census, enumerators collected the data and entered it into a mobile app that was developed for the census. The census was launched in 2018-19. On the use of these water bodies in Delhi, the report said: “Out of 893 water bodies, 26.5% (237) water bodies are in use while 73.5% (656) are reported ‘not in use’ on account of drying up, industrial effluents and other reasons. Among 237 ‘in use’ water bodies, 27.8% (66) water bodies are used for ground water recharge purposes whereas the remaining water bodies are used for recreation, religious and other purposes.”

A total of 77 water bodies were marked as ‘not in use’ on account of having dried up, while 90 are not in use due to ‘construction’, and one was found to have been ‘destroyed beyond repair’.