Delhi Jal Board to plug water leakages by 2016- end

The Delhi Jal Board has put in place a system under which it has divided its distribution areas into small pockets to plug water leakages in its network, which currently stand at a high 45-50 per cent.

The DJB has formed 96 District Metering Areas (DMAs), clusters of 1,000-1,500 water consumers. It will monitor the gap between water supplied and consumed, which is the billed quantity of water. The gap will in turn indicate the Non Revenue Water (NRW), meaning losses through leakages or theft.

Currently, the water utility has set up 96 DMAs and set a deadline of December 2016 to cover whole of Delhi through a total of 1,010 DMAs. The aim is to plug losses in a decentralised way.

“Through these DMAs, we will measure how much is consumed by people and much loss is there. We can have individual figures from these small pockets and can reach to its cause and will be easier to fix it, be it replacing pipelines, checking meters or overhead tanks. But if we only have a total figure of leakage in Delhi, we will not know from where to start. Revolution in the water sector has been brought only through the DMAs in the West, so we need to step up our work,” said DJB CEO Keshav Chandra.

Within the hydraulic boundary of each DMA, the amount of water supplied and consumed will be checked through bulk smart meters installed at  input connection and pressure gauges will be installed to monitor pressure levels.

“This will give us a clear picture of the losses of the losses and their reasons. The current percentage of water leakage is 45-50 per cent which is unacceptable and we have to bring to acceptable limits of 10-15 per cent,” Chandra said.

Water leakages and contamination has been a perennial problem for the water utility of the capital, whose some of the areas like Sangam Vihar are dealing with water scarcity. According to a CAG report in 2013, the raw water available is not enough to provide potable water to the entire population of Delhi, as per prescribed norms.

“We are not going to get additional water, so our main aim should be reducing leakages and utilise that water elsewhere,” said Chandra.

DJB has 20 executive engineers and each engineer has been directed to form five DMAs.
Out of the total 1,010, around 80-90 areas are under PPP projects and 330 others under Asian Development Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency funded projects.