The Hindu : `Improve water supply in districts first'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Improve water supply in districts first'

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, MARCH 22. Can Bangalore talk of 24 x 7 water when districts like Dharwad and Belgaum get supply once in eight days?

B. Srinivasa Reddy, Managing Director of the Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board (KUWS&DB), posed this question during a panel discussion on "Water: Issues faced by metropolitan cities in the southern States of India" held as part of a seminar on "Water and disasters" organised by the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on the occasion of World Water Day here on Monday.

At the start of the discussion, V. Srinivas Chary from the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, who was the moderator, said cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad "must now look at supplying water 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

In his presentation, Mr. Reddy disagreed. While it was necessary to have projects for continuous supply in places like Bangalore, "let us first give water at least once a day for people throughout the State," he said.

The BWSSB supplied water to Bangalore and eight outlying areas, but the KUWS&DB gave water to 125 lakh people in 208 urban local bodies. "Right now, farmers in these areas are drawing drinking water and we cannot stop them," Mr Reddy said. To make matters worse, these districts got just 10 per cent of the funds that Bangalore got.

And when a water supply project did come up with funds from the World Bank, the bank insisted that the work be handed over to the urban local bodies. "But the local bodies are not equipped for this and eventually, these assets will deteriorate," he added.

In his presentation, the BWSSB Chairman, M.N. Vidyashankar, said 24/7 projects supplied less water. "Delhi gives 650 lpcd (litre per capita per day) intermittently, but Singapore gives 24/7 water with just 110-120 lpcd," he said.

The Chairman said projects to cut unaccounted for water (UFW) involved enormous profits. "If you spend Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 12,000 per connection in Bangalore, the rate of return will be 22 per cent and payback time five years," he added.

An official from the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board gave a presentation.

Rainwater harvesting

Earlier, the Chief Secretary to the Government, K.K. Misra, who inaugurated the seminar stressed that the State needed a legislation to harvest rainwater in forests.

"A legislation similar to the one in Andhra Pradesh needs to be looked into seriously. During drought, we always go in for short-term measures, we need to look more seriously at long-term steps," he said.

Although the State had made rainwater harvesting in urban areas mandatory, this was yet to be implemented. "We also need a legislation to ban crops that need more water," he said. This was necessary because Karnataka was reeling under severe drought for the fourth successive year. Further, after Rajasthan, Karnataka had the most arid zone.

Watershed projects played a vital role in rural areas, "but these need to be speeded up because they usually take over 20 years to be completed," he said.

William Martin, Deputy Ddirector for USAID, and M.Shamim Banu, Principal Secretary to the Government, Department of Urban Development, spoke.

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