×
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Kejriwal govt ready with comprehensive plan to clean Yamuna

Last Updated 24 May 2016, 09:51 IST

The Delhi government has finished preparing the comprehensive plan for river Yamuna, which includes cleaning the river and four major drains, creating a special regulation zone, and riverfront development.

Called as the “Yamuna turnaround plan”, it is likely to be completed in two and a half years at a cost of Rs 6,000 crore.

With previous two Yamuna action plans failing to bring desired results, the officials say the new plan is different and will prove much more effective.

“The earlier two plans only focused on the engineering cleaning of the river whereas it requires much more than that. Any water body has to be treated not only as flowing water system but also as an economic spinner and has to be put into urban planning realm,” said a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) official.

One of the major highlights of the plan, which will be presented to Union Ministry of Water Resources soon, is what DJB calls “space making”, which means creating space in the vicinity of water body so people don’t litter and including water bodies in the urban planning mechanism.

Besides an ecological riverfront across 9,000 hectares, the plan includes creation of a “special regulation zone” of 250 metres on both sides of the four large drains – Najafgarh, Supplementary, Shahdara and Barapullah.

The idea is to notify 250 meters around the banks of drains as commercial space where water oriented development will take place.

“We will create a clean water body which will lead to an automatic rise in the value of land around these drains. Then the real estate can come up. Just imagine the spin off and economic benefit the city will gain. All the high rises will come up on the banks and the city will get additional housing and revenue. The water body cleaning should have some meaning and not only cleaning dirty water,” the official said.

The DJB will be sending a proposal for this to Delhi Development Authority (DDA) which will have to change the Delhi Control norms.

For protection of floodplains, the plan has a provision for development of green pathways along the Yamuna, a wetland system in between, and “shallow”.

 On Monday, Delhi’s Water Minister Kapil Mishra led a delegation to meet Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal, renowned environmental activist in Punjab, who resurrected the 110-mile Kali Bein rivulet.

The team visited various sites operated and maintained by Baba Seechewal to treat wastewater and sewage, which used eco-friendly and natural processes, thus reducing the financial and environmental cost of cleaning the river, a statement by the government said.  It found that many of the processes and techniques used in Seechewal found a prominent place in the government’s plan to clean River Yamuna.

ADVERTISEMENT
(Published 24 May 2016, 09:51 IST)

Follow us on

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT