new delhi
—
Ravinder Kumar walks through ankle-deep sludge every day to leave his home in northwest Delhi’s Sharma Enclave, but he never drinks a drop inside his brick tenement.
Surrounded by filth, the 55-year-old regularly turns on a plastic faucet in hopes of finding relief.
“Water comes once every three days, but even then you only get clean water for one hour,” the father of three told CNN on Monday.
“It’s hard to take a bath. Sometimes the water turns black. I wash my bath once every four or five days.”
Kumar is one of the millions of residents of India’s capital suffering from sporadic water shortages after rising ammonia levels in the Yamuna river forced the closure of six of the city’s nine major water treatment plants last week.
The waters of the Yamuna River, considered sacred and worshiped by millions, are so contaminated with ammonia from industrial waste that water treatment plants cannot treat them.
In the city of 20 million people, the Delhi Water Authority announced last Thursday that 43 districts, home to about 2 million people, were affected by water shortages.
CNN contacted resident welfare associations in all 43 districts on Tuesday, who told CNN that 10 districts representing more than 600,000 people have been without water for several days.
Some say their water was shut off for less than a day, while others say their water is still available but at lower levels.
The commission told CNN that supplies were restored two days later, on January 24. But earlier this week, some residents told CNN they still don’t have a reliable supply.
When CNN visited Sharma Enclave on Friday, some residents were using the water they had stored when water was briefly turned on on Thursday. The water was yellow and smelled like rotten eggs. They told CNN that water is delivered every three days, so they don’t expect new supplies until Sunday.
“Everyone’s health is deteriorating,” said Shashi Bala, who lives in the neighborhood. “Everything is dirty here.”
CNN reached out to the Delhi Chief Minister’s Office and the Haryana government for comment on the Yamuna’s high pollution levels and resulting water shortages, but did not receive a response.
The Yamuna River flows south from glaciers in the Himalayas and flows for 855 miles (1,376 kilometers) through several states in India.
Derry was designed around its banks in the 17th century, when the river fed water into canals that cooled the royal palaces.
Currently, the Yamuna serves as the backbone of Delhi’s water infrastructure, providing around 40% of the capital’s water supply. But some of them have been plagued by toxic chemicals and untreated sewage dumps for decades.
According to a government monitoring committee, Delhi accounts for about 76% of the total pollution, although only 2% of the length of rivers flow through the capital.
Dissolved oxygen levels frequently drop to zero, turning historic waterways into septic drains that suffocate aquatic life.
The most visible signs of this decay are the toxic white foam that now coats the surface and the thick layer of sewage and industrial waste that has formed on parts of the river.
Activists descended on the riverbank last Sunday to clean up. They spent hours pulling discarded clothes, plastic waste and submerged religious idols from the river’s murky depths.
Pungent smoke from the bubbles filled the air as activists waded through the toxic water. At one point, they attempted to stop an individual from sinking an idol into the embankment, further polluting the embankment.
“Delhi became a city because of the Yamuna river,” said Pankaj Kumar, one of the volunteers. Ravinder Kumar, who is not affiliated with him, said he knows that removing debris will not rid the river of industrial toxins, the worst disease.
“We have finished this river,” Kumar said.
Delhi’s water crisis is exacerbated by its unregulated growth.
According to a 2022 study on heavy metal contamination of Delhi’s groundwater, unplanned urbanization has led to millions of people living in off-grid unauthorized colonies lacking vital pipelines and drainage facilities, while a lack of sewage management has allowed waste to seep into the soil, contaminating the city’s groundwater reserves as well.
Mismanagement at a construction site near Ravinder Kumar’s home combined with a garbage-filled drain has flooded the low-income neighborhood of Sharma Colony, leaving stagnant wastewater flowing through narrow alleys.
As a result, Bala’s home was flooded with sewage for six months and his family became ill. The 70-year-old grandmother used to walk through the filth to leave the house, but she was forced to stop after spraining her ankle on debris hidden in the muddy water.
“One of my sons has a disability,” she said. “His legs aren’t working. We’re all just stressed out.”
Adding to her worries was that the faucet in her small house had been 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 laundry, even though it irritates her skin. The clothes had been piled up for a week.
Bala is unable to go out to buy clean water because the plastic bottle is too heavy to carry home. Her son is also unable to do that because he has a disability.
“Our neighbors were very helpful. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have water to drink,” she said.
The Delhi Water Authority told CNN on Friday that less than 1% of Delhi had reported “temporary water quality issues, primarily due to illegal booster pumps and unauthorized connections that disrupt pipeline pressure” and that it was working to restore normal supply in these areas.
Delhi’s water supply has been a long-standing problem, and in 1993 the then government launched the Yamuna Action Plan, a clean-up strategy aimed at overhauling the city’s sewage treatment. But at a cost of millions of rupees and more than 30 years later, the river remains a toxic drain, experts say.
Battling chronic shortages, the Delhi government announced last week that it aims to nearly double its sewage treatment capacity to 1.5 billion gallons a day by 2028 and install sewage networks in all unauthorized colonies in the city.
In West Delhi’s Raghbir Nagar area, resident Raja Kamat said water has been cut off for five consecutive days. And when we arrived last Friday, the water was black and appeared to be toxic. The facility is still only available for about 30 minutes each day.
Kamat can hardly afford drinking water either. She lives on a government pension of about $13 a month, and at 30 cents for a five-liter bottle, she is forced to ration every drop.
Neighbor Bhagwanti said “the system is deteriorating” before their eyes.
“A lot of foul-smelling black water is pouring in,” said a 70-year-old resident, who goes by another name, adding that he had no choice but to drink it.
“There are no cleaning facilities. There are no water facilities. They don’t care if you live or die.”
