Abstract
<p>The decline of urban water bodies in India needs to be arrested for sustainable water management in rapidly expanding Indian cities. Reuse of water after partial recycling can reduce environmental stress. Delhi, the Indian capital, has a number of surviving water storage structures built by successive rulers over centuries to tackle water shortage in the summer. In modern Delhi, a fourteen million plus city, water is supplied through technological networks, hastening the decline of the old water storage structures. The old lakes are choked with filth and the step-wells are heaps of rubble. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) have undertaken a project to revive a 700 year-old water body, lying dry for decades, the Hauz Khas Lake, with treated sewage water. The idea was to raise the groundwater table and restore the natural environment of the lake, a past habitat for water birds. This paper attempts to evaluate the immediate impact and the long-term sustainability of the effort through discussions with technical personnel, field observations and interviews with local residents. Manuals and progress reports of the concerned organizations are used as secondary sources. The paper also examines the views of government officials and NGOs regarding the role of other similar projects in alleviating Delhi’s water shortage.</p>
Highlights
There is a growing concern in many quarters that the world is running out of water
The decline of urban water bodies in India needs to be arrested for sustainable water management in rapidly expanding Indian cities
The project uses recycled water from the neighbouring sewage treatment plant to fill up the 700 year-old Hauz Khas Lake, which had been lying dry for forty years
Summary
The Hauz Khas Lake was built in 1295 by Sultan Allauddin Khilji, the ruler, for the inhabitants of Siri, one of the seven cities of Delhi. In 2003 about 2.5 million litres/day of water from the Kishan Garh Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) in Vasant Kunj were diverted at an expense of Rs. 50 lakh by means of a 3.5 km long pipeline to a nearby forest area where two lagoons were created to clean the water further by “Duckweed Pond Technology”. It requires very little maintenance, strip off volatile organics from waste water and provides good mixing (Interviews with DDA officials, 2008-2015)
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