HYDERABAD: With drinking water resources in the city drying up and drawing water from far off places proving expensive, adopting appropriate latest technologies for treatment of wastewater and recycling and reuse has become imperative, said Hyderabad Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board Managing Director K.S. Jawahar Reddy here on Tuesday.

Inaugurating the national seminar on `Disinfection Practices and Issues in Water and Wastewater Management' organised by Engineering Staff College of India (ESCI) on Tuesday, he said that while 65 per cent of city was covered under sewerage system, not even two per cent of sewage generated was treated and recycled for ground water recharge. In the surrounding municipalities, only 20 per cent area had sewerage coverage.

Invites EoIs

The board was inviting Expression of Interest (EoI) to produce class C water through secondary treatment of wastewater for industrial use by 2007. Finding a second use out of sewerage water through new technologies would help in serving city better, he said.

The endeavour would be to increase recycling of wastewater from the present 2 per cent to 20 per cent by 2021, he said. Similarly, finding alternative ways for using sledge generated after treatment will be explored like in London, Melbourne, he said.

Modernisation plan

On the other hand, inadequate sewerage coverage was also a cause for drinking water contamination, more so in Old City.

To address the problem, water and sewerage network would be modernised at a cost of Rs. 500 crores under the National Urban Renewal Mission, he said.

Emphasising the need to recycle the precious resource, he said while board supplied 200 million gallons per day from the existing resources including Manjira and Krishna Drinking Water Supply project, the demand was expected to be 350 mgd by 2015.

The Rs. 1,000 crores Krishna Phase II was being advanced to bring in another 90 MGD of Krishna water.

While chlorination was conventional disinfection method for water and waste water treatment, there were latest alternatives like ultraviolet treatment, ozonation, electro-chlorination, reverse osmosis, nano-filtration to eliminate harmful effects of excess chlorination on one's health.

Adopting them in decentralised distribution systems for treatment and recycling would be easier, she said.

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