Silt hinders Ganga water supply to Noida

NOIDA: The Uttar Pradesh irrigation department has closed the Upper Ganga Canal in Haridwar over the weekend due to heavy rains in Uttarakhand bringing silt in the canal. As a result there was no Ganga water supply across Noida and Ghaziabad on Monday affecting 16 lakh consumers.

Even as residents complained poor quality water supply, officials in the Jal department were busy making alternate arrangements from tube wells and renney wells.

"The supply water was of very bad quality and only for two hours in the morning," said Himani Sharma a resident of sector 20.

"Every year its the same story around monsoon. The water supply gets affected due to silt in Haridwar canal and we in Noida have to depend on ground water supply which is depleting over years," said Amit Gupta, resident of sector 74.

According to Samakant Srivastava, project engineer (Jal) Noida authority an sms was received late Sunday evening from R K Aggarwal project incharge Ganga Jal project division UP Jal Nigam Ghaziabad intimating officials that "as per information from UP irrigation department, the Ganga nahar (canal) in Hardiwar has been closed from July 2 early morning due to heavy rains and consequent silting in Uttarakhand. As a result supply of Ganga water will be closed from July 3 night," read Aggarwal's message who also instructed officials to make alternate arrangements of providing drinking water supply.

According to UP Irrigation department officials, the silt in the canal has exceeded 7000 particles per million (ppm) against normal 5000 ppm leading to inhibited flow.

The canal closure is initiated by the irrigation department due to heavy rain bringing in the said amount o silt Srivastava told TOI adding further that this should not deter supply in Noida as enough renney and tube wells are being tapped by the department to source, and supply water.

"All four Jal divisions have been alerted accordingly to use their tube well and renney wells. Directions have also been issued by Hom Singh Yadav, chief engineer -Jal," said Srivastava.

According to Srivastava, all these directions were issued from Sunday night itself. When probed on the depleting ground water tables and lack of requisite supply as a result, Srivastava maintained that the "all our divisions are having ample number of tube well and renney wells."

He however could not give a time frame for the disruption of the said supply. "We don't know for how long the canal will be closed, but most probably the Ganga water supply should not take more than couple of days to resume," said Srivastava.

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