Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has written to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal flagging the "pathetic sanitation and hygiene conditions" at the Wazirabad Water Treatment Plant, which supplies drinking water to large parts of the national capital.

Responding to the letter, Delhi's water minister Saurabh Bhardwaj accused the LG of "playing dirty politics on the sensitive issue of water supply" and claimed that illegal sand mining in Haryana was blocking Yamuna's water supply towards the national capital. Used to be.

LG VK Saxena also spoke about the "gross inaction" of the Delhi Jal Board in cleaning and sanitizing the reservoir pond behind the Wazirabad barrage, which supplies water to the Wazirabad and Chandrawal water treatment plants.

He claimed that more than 9 lakh million gallons of water was wasted in Delhi because the pond was not de-silted.

Referring to his visit to the area on 9 March, VK Saxena said he had witnessed "gross neglect and criminal neglect" of the WTP and pond area, resulting in "complete water scarcity".

The letter alleged that the plant itself has rusted and filth-filled reservoirs, rusted pipelines, silt-covered equipment and electrically operated water pumps.

Saxena said, "Despite having a contract for desilting since 2013, no de-siltation has taken place, as a result of which the depth of the pond has reduced from 4.26 meters to just 0.42 meters during the last eight years."

In the letter, he said that the de-silting work was stopped due to a stay order by the National Green Tribunal in September 2014 and was resumed after the stay was lifted in 2015.

It is worth highlighting here that while five lakh cubic meters of silt was removed in about nine months between 2013 and 2014, only 1.1 cubic meters of silt was removed in the period between 2015 and 2018, after the stay was lifted by the Hon'ble NGT.

"Even after this, despite no work being done, it took almost four years for DJB to terminate the contract by February 2022," the LG said.

The pond kept getting silted and shrinking.

Of the 6.1 million cubic meters of silt removed between the dates, when there was no cap on de-silting, about three million cubic meters of "good silt" was sold by the contractor and the rest left at the site, after which, again, the soil has accumulated.

LG Saxena said in his letter that Delhi is now facing a situation in which about 10 lakh cubic meters of silt is once again blocking the pond area, reducing its holding capacity.

"A back-of-the-envelope calculation would reveal that during the last 10 years, due to siltation of the pond area, Delhi, an area which is almost exclusively dependent on other states for its water needs, has lost approx. 9,12,500 million gallons of water literally flows into the river.

LG Saxena, in his letter to Kejriwal, advised immediate desilting and cleaning of the pond area and upgradation of the water treatment plant.

"It would also be necessary that strict action is initiated against the officials responsible for this gross negligence and criminal misconduct," the letter said.

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