Water can drain a city’s resources
D Murali
Statistics are often dreaded as dry data. But here are some numbers about something wet: water.
Less than half of all Asians have access to improved sanitation, and the situation in rural areas is less than half that in urban settings. Nine out 10 people in North America and Europe have access to safe drinking water. More than two million children die every year from water-related diseases. Between two and three per cent of the world’s energy consumption is used for pumping and treating wastewater. And in the developing world, the cost of energy to supply water may easily consume half of a municipality’s budget.
Mentioning these facts, Constance Elizabeth Hunt writes in ‘Thirsty Planet’ (www.academicfoundation.com) that “people in the industrialised world use highly treated drinking water to flush their toilets, wash their cars and water their lawns and golf courses while women in Africa walk many kilometres each day carrying water urns on their backs to provide a minimal supply of freshwater for their families.”
Shockingly, “flush toilets account for around 40 per cent of the residential water use in industrial countries.”
It may surprise you to know that the water closet, which is one of the unmistakable signs of modernity, is viewed by sanitation experts as ‘one of the stupidest technologies of all time’. Why so? Because in an effort to make the stuff ‘invisible’, the WC “mixes pathogen-bearing faeces with industrial toxins in the sewer system, thus turning ‘an excellent fertiliser and soil conditioner’ into a serious, far-reaching and dispersed disposal problem,” reads a snatch that Hunt quotes from a paper by H. Lovins and W. Link of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
“The World Health Organisation has stated that water-borne sanitation cannot meet any of its declared objectives – equity, disease prevention and sustainability – and suggests that only with more modern (waterless) technologies can the world’s cities be affordably provided with clean water for drinking, cooking and washing.”
Municipal wastewater is composed primarily of water and human excreta, but often contains trace amounts of other contaminants, explains the book. “In countries with modern sewage treatment systems, wastewater discharges from households are frequently contaminated with other substances – ranging from detergents to pesticides and caustic plumbing agents – which families dump into their sinks and toilets.”
It may be of interest to know who invented the WC. “Despite urban legend, Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) did not invent the flush toilet,” says Wikipedia. “Credit is usually given to Sir John Harington in 1596, with Alexander Cummings’ 1775 toilet regarded as the first of the modern line and George Jennings installing the first public toilets at The Great Exhibition in 1851.”
Crapper, a plumber who founded Thomas Crapper & Co. Ltd. in London, held nine patents, three of them for water closet improvements such as the floating ballcock, but none were for the flush toilet itself, one learns.
There is another problem with water: accounting. Despite the technology and the record-keeping skills that the world now enjoys, not all water is accounted. Much water is lost from distribution systems, owing to seepage, leaks, illegal connections, faulty or broken water meters, and so on, and the figures therefore don’t tally.
How much is the difference? Lots.
“In India, over 40 per cent of the total municipal water supply is lost in the distribution system before it reaches the consumers.” Mexico City loses an equal percentage due to ‘leaky pipes built at the beginning of the twentieth century’. More than 50 per cent the water supplied is unaccounted for in the cities of North Africa and the Middle East, whole North America’s record in this regard is 15 per cent. Even Singapore is said to suffer from 8 per cent of ‘unaccounted for water’.
Talking of wastages, the book cites the case the Guateng Province of South Africa, which includes more than a fifth of the country’s population, including the metropolitan areas of Pretoria and Johannesburg. In this province, 52 per cent of water supplied to the urban sector is wasted through inefficiency, the author rues. “These losses amount to 1.5 million cubic metres per day, which is more than enough to meet the total, combined water needs of two neighbouring countries, Botswana and Lesotho.”
Similarly, the amount of water lost in Mexico City is equal to the gross needs of Rome, says Hunt. Mexico City’s water situation contributes directly to the country’s economic problems, because of more than one reason, she elaborates.
First, the residents pay only 20 per cent of the actual costs of being provided with water; and second, constrained by its geography, Mexico City draws water from 200 km away and 2,000 metres lower. Twenty-five years ago, the city had to pump water from a distance of 100 km and from 1,000 metres below. Woefully for the administration, costs of meeting water requirements is equal to almost ‘half of Mexico’s annual interest payments on its external debt’.
Useful lessons for India, if only we were thirsting for the same.
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BookBuilding@TheHindu.co.in
National
