Important Environmental Issues

Environmental issues that Delhi is facing as of now are:-

1. Loss of green cover
2. Loss of ground water
3. Death of Yamuna
4. Air pollution
5. Water pollution

Delhi use to be the greenest capital in world and in the garb of development we lost quite a lot green cover and forgot to plant equivalent trees.

Most of the unauthorized and illegal colonies do not have water supply and they use a lot of ground water and many industries often use ground water behind the scenes. Even houses with DJB(Delhi Jal Board) supply also have got boring done because of DJB's bad water supply be it quantity or be it quality. This is causing dessertification of Delhi at a rapid pace.

We killed Yamuna, yes we did. We could have saved river but we didn't. Open google earth and track yamuna in Delhi you will see bluish green Yamuna entering Delhi suddenly becomes black after it crosses Wazirabad. If you look closely you will see Sahibi river aka Najafgarh nallah falling into it. And if you track Sahibi in Delhi you will see that it carries more than half of Delhi's sewage and industrial waste and before that gurgaon also releases its waste into it. So ideally we should have constructed a sewage treatment plant just before it meets Yamuna, right? But we are constructing signature bridge at that location. I am not against development, bridge was needed and will prevent air pollution (the other problem) to some extent. So we killed the largest water body we had and became dependent on neighboring states for our water requirement. Also, it resulted in loss of aquatic life. Industrial wastes are directly thrown into Sahibi very oftwn.

Air pollution: Delhi is expanding day by day and people have got more spending power than before and industries are not well shaped. The number of cars and bikes is increasing exponentially in Delhi. Although we have one of the best road infrastructure in India but the number of vehicles have literally jammed Delhi during most part of the day. Also, we have one of the worst public transport in India only metro is exception. Ever since globalization when new industries were setup in Delhi and around the load on Delhi multiplied as very often no Delhi bound heavy vehicles pass through delhi and put pressure on existing infrastructure. In late 90s SC banned set up new industries which may release pollutants into air but the older factories more or less remained the same. They're​ polluting Delhi like anything and no government agency is forcing them to abide the rules.