With Delhi's groundwater situation reaching a “semi-critical” stage, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Delhi Government and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to put their heads together and suggest possible solutions to the looming crisis within two months.
What alerted the Court to press the panic button was a report tabled by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) placing major parts of the Capital under the “Overexploited” and “Semi Critical” category. What is worse is the Board's analysis that since past two decades, the water table in the city has shown a “persistent declining” trend including the President's Estate area in lutyens Zone where the water level is fast depleting.
Fixing July 11 as the next date for the Delhi Government and DPCC to respond, a bench of Justices Madan B lokur and Deepak Gupta expressed concern over the “extremely sad state of affairs” concerning the water crisis facing Delhi. The report was filed in response to a Court order which had wished to know on the ground water position in Delhi while dealing with the Master Plan 2021 and the Centre's attempts to amend the same by allowing commercialization in residential pockets of the Capital.
The CWGB report said that analysis of Ground Water Resources Estimation of the long term water level from May 2000 to May 2017 showed that over the period, water level decline rate varied from 0.5 metre per year to over 2 metre per year. “It is quite clear that there is over-exploitation of ground water in south district, New Delhi district, south-east district, east district, Shahadara, north-east district and almost rest of Delhi is in a semi-critical state,” the bench said.
“There are only some pockets in west district and central district which appear to be safe as of now. We can only urge the concerned authorities dealing with governance of Delhi to look into the report of the CWGB to avoid a water crisis,” added the bench.
Critical indicators came from monitoring stations at Dwarka and Satbari showing decline of -1.1937 and -1.4267 respectively over the period 2000-17. For the corresponding period, situation was recorded worse at President's Estate (-0.8109) followed by areas in Kingsway Camp, Ashok Vihar, Shahdara, Palla Temple, Pusa Institute, among other areas.
The subject could be better explained if one was to see the depleting levels of water over the decades. In May 2000, 403 square kilometer area in Delhi had water level between 0-5 m below ground level (bgl), which in May 2017 stands at 172.35 sqkm (a mere 11 per cent of city landscape). Compared to it, areas where water level was available at depths of 40-80 mbgl was nil in May 2000 which steeply hiked to 222.54 sqkm in May 2017. In some pockets of Capital, change in water level is either insignificant or unchanged. But such pockets of shallow and rising water level areas are also diminishing over the decades, the report revealed.
The bench felt there must be an all out war against such a crisis and all resources of Government must go into finding solutions to the crisis facing the Capital.