After staying above the unprecedented mark 208 metres for over 48 hours, the water level dropped to 207.98m at 11pm on Friday. Officials said the level was likely to fall to 207.65m by 10am Saturday.
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, too, sounded optimistic. “There’s a bit of good news. The floodwater is receding,” he said.
The situation had looked grim in the morning. The backflow from a drain where a regulator had collapsed because of pressure building up at some choked gates of the ITO barrage had, as anticipated, pushed water on to Vikas Marg at ITO and Mathura Road, reaching the doorstep of the Supreme Court. Vikas Marg was closed for traffic till late at night.
Rajghat and other samadhis were inundated even as the water showed little signs of receding from behind Red Fort and areas near Kashmere Gate, particularly Civil Lines, besides other low-lying areas.
01:34
Waterlogging persists in Yamuna’s adjoining areas, commuters face difficulties
After some unseemly squabbling between the Delhi government and the LG’s office, Army engineers were called in to help. They had completed around 80% of the restoration work on the barrage by night – primarily opening some jammed gates and clearing silt and sludge – after which they were to start working on restoring the collapsed regulator near the WHO building on Ring Road.
By nightfall, the water that had been flowing into the drain from the river had changed direction, easing pressure on the roads in the vicinity.
There were other signs of a return to normalcy. “We have managed to make the Okhla water treatment plant functional today. By tomorrow morning, if the water level comes down to 207.7 metres, we will be able to dry the remaining two WTPs and make them functional as well,” he said.
Officials said the water discharge from the Hathnikund barrage, which had gone up to 3.5 lakh cusecs on July 11 due to excessive rain in Punjab and the hills of Himachal Pradesh, was now down to nearly 50,000 cusecs. With no heavy rain in the north till now, officials said the release from the barrage may go down even further and its impact will soon be felt in the city.
“On Tuesday, 2.5-3.5 lakh cusecs of water was released from the barrage every hour, which reduced to nearly 1.5-2.5 lakh on Wednesday, and since then it is steadily decreasing. Today, the water discharged from the barrage was recorded between 50,000 cusecs and 70,000 cusecs,” said an official of the irrigation and flood control department.
“Now, when the river is full, it takes about 24 hours for the water to reach Delhi from the barrage. As the volume is decreasing, the water level is also coming down at a rate of 2-3cm every hour,” said the official.
Watch River Yamuna flowing above highest flood level in Delhi