Hinting that the water shortage in the city may become a major cause for concern if the monsoons are delayed further, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit appealed to citizens to conserve water.

The Delhi Jal Board has said it might be forced to ration water in the coming days if the pond level at Wazirabad goes down further.

DJB’s Chief Executive Officer Ramesh Negi said: “Even though the situation is not alarming yet, production will get affected if the pond level keeps going down. We are suffering from the impact of the delay in monsoons, while the impact of inadequacy of rains will be seen next year.”

The water level, which has gradually been going down for the past few days, was down by 1.5 feet on Friday.

While the Supreme Court has mandated that the Yamuna water level should remain at 674.5 feet for the proper functioning of the Wazirabad and Chandrawal water treatment plants (WTP), the level at the Wazirabad pond was recorded at 673 feet today. As a result, the production at the Wazirabad WTP has gone down by 20 per cent.

Senior Jal Board officials said the total potable water production through various sources was 685 million gallons per day (MGD) on Friday, against the agency’s total capacity to produce 730 MGD.

Negi said the yield of the Jal Board’s Raney wells has already gone down and inadequate rains will adversely affect the recharge of depleting groundwater levels and the Yamuna.

“We will have to ration our water supplies if the pond level goes further down. The process will have local variations related to the amount of water supplied to various underground reservoirs (UGRs),” Negi added.

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