Delhi Water Minister Atishi on Thursday pulled up the chief secretary for delays in setting up an ammonia treatment plant at Wazirabad and directed him to float a tender for the project by January 15, officials said.
Atishi said ammonia levels in the Yamuna touched 2.8 ppm (parts per million), impacting the production capacity of the water treatment plants at Chandrawal and Wazirabad.
As a result, the production capacity of the two plants dipped by up to 50 per cent while the average production loss was around 35-40 per cent.
The minister said the crisis affected almost a fourth of the national capital, especially the densely populated areas of Sadar Bazar, Civil Lines, Old Delhi, Mukherjee Nagar, Burari, Patel Nagar, Rajinder Nagar, Karol Bagh, Majnu Ka Tilla, ISBT, Barafkhana, Bara Hindu Rao, Kamala Nagar, and Roop Nagar.
“The rising levels of ammonia in the Yamuna river has now become a recurring problem that occurs every year, impacting the lives of lakhs of people living in the national capital,” Atishi said in her notice to the chief secretary.
“Effluent released by Haryana, coupled with the non-maintenance of the ecological flow of the river by Haryana, are the major reasons behind the rise in ammonia in Delhi,” she said.
Atishi pointed out that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal chaired a meeting of the Delhi Jal Board in March during which this issue was discussed at length.
“In the meeting, it was decided that the immediate solution to this crisis was in-situ treatment of ammonia inside the Wazirabad pond,” she wrote.
Atishi said the project was supposed to be implemented within four to six months, but despite the Chief Secretary being present at the meeting, it has been delayed.