After backing the Yamuna, AAP faces green test on water, power

In this season of daily controversies, one of the truly historic decisions taken by the Aam Aadmi Party government went virtually unnoticed. Possibly for the first time, a government in India has decided to sacrifice an investment of Rs 60 crore and surrender prime real estate of 60 acres to secure a river. The decision to remove India’s largest bus depot from the Yamuna riverbed is truly game-changing because the previous government was in no mood to let go of the land it had temporarily gained access to for accommodating the buses required for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. [caption id=“attachment_1361015” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo - Flood water from the Yamuna River rising by the Commonwealth Games village in New Delhi. AFP[/caption] Instead of vacating the area that comes under Zone ‘O’ where no urbanization is allowed as per the Delhi Master Plan, the Sheila Dikshit government had asked the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) last year to initiate the process of changing its land use to transportation. This would have remained yet another brazen instance of how land grab on the Yamuna riverbed gets regularized but for Arvind Kejriwal’s intervention. The new chief minister expressed helplessness that his government could not remove the more permanent constructions – the Akshardham temple or the Games village, for example – but assured that his government would not allow any building close to the river in the future. This was not even on his list of 17 promises. But this bold step will not be enough to revive the Yamuna, though. Only half of Delhi’s 2000 MLD sewage can be treated in the city’s 32 sewage treatment plants most of which do not even work to capacity. Kejriwal will have to master the will and resources to gradually reduce this load of untreated human waste flowing unchecked into the river. The new government’s green tests also include finding sustainable remedies to the city’s water and power needs. Purchasing expensive power from the grid to meet the demands of cheap power will only make the subsidy bill unmanageable. Channeling dam waters from far-flung hinterland to compensate for the sinking aquifers will only fuel inter-state wars. Like every mega city, Delhi’s only solution lies in rainwater and solar power harvesting. The city faces a daily average shortage of 150 MGD or almost 55,000 million gallons a year. At the standard 60 percent runoff coefficient, Delhi’s average annual rainfall of 611 mm can meet this deficit if we harvest rainwater across even less than half of the city’s 1500 sq km area. Accounting for the open space, this is very much possible. In June 2001, the Ministry of Urban affairs and Poverty Alleviation made rainwater harvesting mandatory in Delhi for all new buildings with a roof area of more than 100 sq meter and plots larger than 1000 sq meter. The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) made rainwater harvesting mandatory in all institutions and residential colonies in notified areas of south and southwest Delhi, Faridabad, Gurgaon and Ghaziabad and set a deadline of 31 March, 2002. There is time before the monsoon arrives. The new government must channel its energy in cracking down on every government, institutional and commercial building violating these rules. As for individual households and RWAs, the chief minister should know how a carrot-and-stick policy works. A bureaucrat in Chennai and a scientist in Bangalore have already shown the way. The Delhi administration has been debating about how to offer subsidy to consumers who use solar heaters. The Delhi airport has set up a mega 2.14 MW solar plant. The Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) is consulting stakeholders before introducing meters for rooftop solar power plants to keep records of self-consumption and contribution to the grid. Yet, with at least 300 sunny days a year and more than 700 sq km of built-up area in around 30 lakh households for installation of photo-voltaic plates, Delhi has so far failed to tap its enormous solar potential of more than 100 GW. More realistically, a 2013 Greenpeace study estimated that Delhi can become a 2GW city by 2020. The stagnation of the solar boom across Europe where governments have been struggling to bear the burden of over-subsidizing the clean fuel is pushing the price of solar technologies down. On the other hand, the depletion of fossil fuels and the growing awareness of the ecological costs of dams are making traditional electricity costlier. In another five years or so, solar electricity is likely to lose its price disadvantage. While the US may eventually emerge the biggest beneficiary of the lull in the European solar scenario, one town in California has already decided to go the whole distance. About 70 miles north of Los Angeles, Lancaster passed an ordinance and obtained the approval from the state energy commission to make it mandatory for new builders to provide 1 KW of solar electricity per housing unit. Power and distribution companies resist such moves everywhere. But that should only encourage Kejriwal. Mass harvesting of sun and rain will require his government to budget for early incentives. But, if he is serious about equal entitlement, this may just be the only way out from the vicious and perpetual cycles of energy and water subsidies. - jaymazoomdaar@gmail.com