Noida: With desilting work about to end, water supply to the Ganga will be restored from Monday.

NOIDA: As the Uttar Pradesh government’s irrigation department is close to completing work to desilt the Ganga water canal that supplies drinking water to Noida and other cities, the Noida authorities are set to resume water supply to the Ganga on Monday.

The irrigation department and Noida authorities failed to restore water supply ahead of Diwali, but now want to supply it before the Chhath festival, during which devotees offer prayers in rivers or other bodies of water. The irrigation department is also releasing at least 700 cusecs of Ganga water from the Upper Ganga canal into the Hindon river from Meerut district to purify water in Yamuna and Hindon so that devotees on Chhat get better quality water during prayers, officials said.

The Hindon River, which originates from Pur-Ka-Tanda in Sahranpur and joins the Yamuna at Monathal village in Noida. Hindon is also connected to the upper Yamuna near Okhla through the Shahdara drainage.

“We are releasing Ganga water into Hindon to make it purified and also help Yamuna water become better for Chhath. We started releasing water on Sunday and it will continue even after Chhath,” said BK Singh, executive engineer of the Uttar Pradesh irrigation department.

Due to the month-long clean-up work, Noida authorities were not drawing water from the Ganga River or using groundwater for drinking purposes in all residential areas of the city, officials said.

The irrigation department began the annual emptying of the Upper Ganga canal on October 12 and stopped the supply of Ganga water to Noida, which receives 240 million liters of Ganga water daily from this canal through a reservoir located in Sidharth Vihar area of ​​Ghaziabad. Due to disruption in Ganga’s water supply, residents are facing drinking water quality problem as the authorities are only able to supply salty and undrinkable groundwater, officials said.

“We have partially completed the desilting work in the Ganga Canal and the remaining desilting work in the upper part of the canal is ongoing. On Sunday, we started releasing water into the Ganga canal, which supplies water to Noida. We have a target of restoring the full supply of 240 MLD on Monday as we have already started releasing water for Noida,” said B K Singh, executive engineer of the Uttar Pradesh irrigation department, which monitors the canal and other water resources.

Currently, the total water requirement in Noida is 332 million liters per day (MLD). The authorities supply residents with 240 million liras of Ganges water, and the rest is extracted from groundwater resources. In the absence of Ganga water supply, authorities are meeting drinking water needs only from groundwater resources, thereby witnessing problems such as low water pressure in old sectors and quality issues.

The authorities supply 70% of the water from the Ganga and 30% of the groundwater to most areas of the city.

The authority is supplying water to more than 100 residential areas and in the future intends to provide Ganga water supply to the remaining about 50 residential areas once they start receiving more water from the Ganga by the end of 2024.

The authorities are yet to start supplying water from the river Ganga to sectors 94, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135, 150 and 151 and other areas that are located between the Yamuna embankment road and the Noida Expressway .

Every year during these months, the irrigation department cleans the canal and restores the water supply to the Ganga after the work is completed.

“We started receiving water from the Ganga on Sunday and we hope that the uninterrupted supply of water from the Ganga will resume at its full capacity of 240 MLD on Monday afternoon. This season, unlike previous years when it took a month, the water supply of the Ganga was disrupted for only 16-17 days. The irrigation department restored water supply in just 17 days, unlike in 2023 when it took a month,” said R.P. Singh, deputy director general of the Noida authority, which heads the water supply department.

“As water supply to the Ganga has stopped, old residential areas are facing water supply problems such as low water pressure. There are also problems with murky water as authorities extract groundwater through tube wells and sometimes sand gets mixed with the water. Old sectors like sectors 12, 15, 19, 20, 25, 27, 28 and 34, among others, are facing low water pressure,” said N P Singh, president of Gautam Budh Nagar District Residents Welfare Association (DDRWA). ), group.