Ganga water supply to be hit for 20 days from Oct 13

Noida: The UP irrigation department will shut down the supply of Ganga water to Noida and Ghaziabad for 20 days from Sunday because of annual designation work on the upper Ganga canal in Haridwar.
The shutdown will begin on Oct 13, officials said. They said there would be no water shortage during the shutdown because the Authority will source water from Ranney and tube wells.
Several residents are sceptical, and they fear that the closure will exacerbate the water shortage, as several parts of the city have already been experiencing scarcity over the past couple of months.
The upper Ganga canal in Haridwar is the main source and the water from there is treated at the Siddharth Vihar and Pratap Vihar plants in Ghaziabad, and then supplied to both the cities. The canal spans 292 km and caters to 15 districts of UP.
"Post-monsoon, inspections of the canal are carried out, usually in Sept, when silt deposits are found in it, which leads to the annual shutdown for cleaning," Mukesh Verma from UP Jal Nigam told TOI.
"Water supply problems, especially during festivals, make it hard to run the house and do chores. Every year, we face the same situation. We already wrote to the Noida Authority to prepare for this annual dip in advance," said PS Jain, president of CONRWA.
"We had demanded water treatment plants and storage reservoirs to address the shortage of Ganga water supply during the festive period. Advanced planning is required for this since it is an annual exercise," said Yogendra Sharma, FONRWA president.
Noida consumes nearly 400 MLD of water every day. Presently, about 240 MLD of Ganga water is supplied.
There are 11 Ranney wells along Yamuna, each having a capacity of about 15 MLD, Noida Authority officials have said. There are also 425 tube wells, each having a capacity of 8 MLD. However, currently, only seven Ranney wells are functional while repair work is underway on four.
"Water will be supplied from seven Ranney wells and over 400 tube wells during the Ganga water shutdown," said RP Singh, general manager of the water department, Noida Authority.