Home taps become empty, but Ganga water supply returns

Noida: On Friday morning, water slowly trickled out of taps in several parts of the city due to the Ganga canal being closed since Thursday midnight to facilitate agricultural harvesting.

The flow of drinking water was restored on Friday afternoon from the treatment facilities in Ghaziabad’s Siddharth Vihar and Pratap Vihar after several residents expressed worry about not having enough of it at home.
On Friday, however, a few regions complained about a brackish water supply and poor pressure.

Officials from Jal Nigam stated that as agricultural harvesting is taking place in a number of locations, the irrigation department has stopped the Haridwar canal.
Executive Engineer Unmesh Shukla, Ganga Jal Project Unit (Urban), Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam, Ghaziabad, said TOI, “Jal Nigam had requested the irrigation department to release water for drinking given that Noida and Ghaziabad depend on water supply from Haridwar.” The water was released on Friday afternoon as per our request.
Given that Noida uses 400 MLD of water per day on average, cutting off the Ganga water supply—which uses around 240 MLD—could result in a 50 MLD shortfall. Water is supplied to Noida and some areas of Ghaziabad by the 50-cusec and 100-cusec plants located at the Pratap Vihar facility in Ghaziabad. Noida, GMC, and the UP Housing Board get 120 MLD of Ganga water from the 50-cusec facility. Producing 245 MLD of water per hour, the 100-cusec plant mainly serves the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) and Noida.
Water-related issues have been plaguing the city quite a bit. Some areas of Noida, such as Sectors 50, 51, 19, 20, 62, 119, and Sector Eta 1, Beta, Gamma, etc. in Greater Noida, have been reporting poor water pressure and brackish, black water supply for the last several days, including Thursday and Friday morning.
“The city’s water difficulties are becoming worse every day. Houses in Sector Eta 1 were provided with dirty water today. According to Deepak Bhait, the RWA president of Sector Eta 1, Greater Noida, “despite complaints to the authority, there hasn’t been a resolution so far.”
About twenty private tankers were dispatched to a high-rise in Sector 119 on Wednesday, fifteen on Thursday, and fifteen on Friday. “During the three-hour supply, the water pressure has been so low that we haven’t been able to fill our tanks to the required level. This is the case even though we have paid the whole amount due in advance for each of our three connections,” said Gautam Sharma, the AOA secretary of Eldeco Aamantran, Sector 119.