31% of sewage generated in Delhi remains untreated, says pollution control committee report | Delhi News
Around 31% of the sewage generated in Delhi continues to remain untreated, according to a recent report submitted by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to the National Mission for Clean Ganga.
The report submitted at the end of July noted that out of an estimated 792 MGD (million gallons per day) of sewage generated in the city, the gap in treatment was around 245 MGD or 31% in the month of June.
Delhi has 35 STPs with a total capacity of 632 MGD, but the capacity that was utilised in June this year was only around 547 MGD, going by the DPCC’s report.
The gap in sewage treatment has not improved at least over the past year, previous DPCC reports show.
Around 27.1% of sewage was going untreated in May last year when the sewage generated was estimated to be around 768 MGD, a little below the figure estimated this year on account of an increase in water supply from around 960 MGD in May last year to 990 MGD in June this year.
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By upgrading existing STPs and constructing new ones, the Delhi government plans on increasing the sewage treatment capacity in the city to 964 MGD by June next year, going by the report. A total of 40 decentralised STPs are proposed and land has been allotted so far for 29 of these treatment facilities. A new 124-MGD sewage treatment facility is also slated to come up at Okhla by the end of this year, having missed its earlier deadline of June this year.
Untreated sewage ends up in the city’s drains and in the Yamuna.
The government also aims to upgrade existing STPs to meet water quality norms, that is parameters like biochemical oxygen demand and total suspended solids, by June 2024. In June this year, only 13 of the city’s 35 STPs were meeting water quality standards prescribed by the DPCC.