Millions of Delhi residents lost water for days. Some say it’s still toxic

New Delhi (CNN) — Ravinder Kumar wades through ankle-deep sludge every day to leave his home in Sharma Enclave in northwest Delhi – yet inside the brick tenement, he does not have a drop to drink.

Surrounded by filth, the 55-year-old twists his plastic taps regularly, hoping for relief.

“Water comes once every three days, and even then, you only get clean water for an hour,” the father of three told CNN on Monday.

“It’s difficult to bathe. The water is black at times. We wash once every four or five days.”

Kumar is one of millions of residents in the Indian capital suffering sporadic water shortages due to rising ammonia levels in the Yamuna River that last week forced six of the city’s nine major water plants to shut down.

Water from the Yamuna – considered sacred and worshipped by millions – has become so polluted by ammonia from industrial waste that water plants have been unable to treat it.

In this city of 20 million people, the Delhi Water Board said last Thursday that 43 neighborhoods – home to about two million people – had been affected by water shortages.

CNN reached out to resident welfare associations in all 43 neighborhoods on Tuesday, and of those, 10 – representing more than 600,000 people – told CNN they’d received no water for days.

Others said it was turned off for no more than a day, and some said the water was still available but at a reduced level.

The board told CNN supplies were restored two days later – on January 24. However, earlier this week, some residents told CNN they still didn’t have a reliable supply.

When CNN visited Sharma Enclave on Friday, some residents were using water they’d stored when taps flowed for a short time on Thursday. The water was yellow and smelled like rotting eggs. They told CNN they didn’t expect any new supplies until Sunday as water is brought every three days.

“Everyone’s health is deteriorating,” said Shashi Bala, who lives in the neighborhood. “Everything is dirty here.”

CNN has contacted the Delhi chief minister’s office and the Haryana state government for comment regarding the high pollution levels in the Yamuna River and the consequent water shortage, but received no response.

The Yamuna River flows south from a glacier in the Himalayas for 855 miles (1,376 kilometers) through several Indian states.

Delhi was designed around its banks in the 17th century, when the river fed the canals that cooled royal palaces.

Today, the Yamuna serves as the backbone of Delhi’s water infrastructure, providing roughly 40% of the capital’s supply. But for decades, sections of it have been plagued by the dumping of toxic chemicals and untreated sewage.

Though only 2% of the river’s length flows through the capital, Delhi contributes about 76% of its total pollution, according to a government monitoring committee.

Dissolved oxygen levels frequently plummet to zero, transforming the historic waterway into a septic drain that suffocates aquatic life.

The most visible sign of this decay is the toxic white foam that now coats the surface, a thick layer of sewage and industrial waste that has formed over sections of the river.

Activists descended on the riverbanks last Sunday for a clean-up. For hours, they pulled discarded clothes, plastic waste, and submerged religious idols from the river’s murky depths.

The pungent fumes from the foam engulfed the air as activists waded through the toxic water. At one point, they attempted to stop an individual from immersing an idol into the banks and polluting it further.

“Delhi became a city because the Yamuna flowed,” said one volunteer Pankaj Kumar, no relation to Ravinder Kumar, who said he knows that removing the debris won’t rid the river of its worst ailment – industrial toxins.

“We have finished this river,” Kumar said.

Delhi’s water crisis is compounded by its chaotic growth.

Unplanned urbanization has left millions living in unauthorized colonies off the grid, lacking essential pipelines or drainage, while the absence of sewage management allows waste to seep into the soil, also poisoning the city’s groundwater reserves, according to a 2022 study of heavy metal pollution in Delhi’s groundwater.

Mismanagement at a construction site near Ravinder Kumar’s home, combined with garbage-choked drains, has inundated Sharma Colony, a low-income neighborhood, leaving its narrow alleys flowing with stagnant wastewater.

Bala’s home was flooded with dirty water for six months as a result, making her family sick. The 70-year-old grandmother used to wade through the filth to leave her home, but she said she was forced to stop after spraining her ankle on the debris hidden in the muddy water.

“One of my sons is disabled,” she said. “His leg doesn’t work. We’re all just stressed.”

To add to her worry, the taps in her small home were dry for three days straight.

When the water returned last Monday, it was dirty, but she said she had no choice but to use it for washing – clothes had been piled up for a week – even though it irritates her skin.

Bala can’t go out to buy clean water, because the bottles are too heavy to carry home. Her son can’t either due to his disability.

“My neighbors have helped a lot. If it wasn’t for them, we would have had no water to drink,” she said.

Of the dirty water, the Delhi Water Board told CNN Friday that less than 1% of areas in Delhi reported “temporary water quality issues, mainly due to illegal booster pumps and unauthorized connections that disturb pipeline pressure,” and that it was working to restore normal supply in those areas.

Delhi’s water supply has long been an issue, and in 1993 the government of the day launched the Yamuna Action Plan, a clean-up strategy intended to overhaul the city’s sewage treatment. But millions of rupees and more than three decades later, experts say the river remains a toxic drain.

Battling chronic shortages, the Delhi government said last week that it aims to almost double its sewage treatment capacity to 1,500 million gallons per day and install sewage networks in all of the city’s unauthorized colonies by 2028.

In the West Delhi neighborhood of Raghubir Nagar, resident Raja Kamat said the water was off for five days straight. And when it did arrive last Friday, the water was black and seemed toxic. It’s still only available for about 30 minutes each day, she said.

Kamat can barely afford to buy drinking water either. She survives on a monthly government pension of about $13 a month, and with a single 5-liter bottle of water costing 30 cents, she is forced to ration every drop.

Her neighbor, Bhagwanti, said the “system is deteriorating” in front of them.

“There is so much smelly black water coming in,” the 70-year-old resident who goes by one name, said, adding she has no choice but to drink it.

“There’s no facility for cleaning. There’s no facility for water. They don’t care if you live or die.”

The-CNN-Wire
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