This is the standard quantity of water supply recommended for the resident of any metro city by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation, New Delhi.
The average water supplied to a Bangalorean ranges between 100 and 110 LPD presently. “We are banking heavily on the additional 500 million litres per day (MLD) that the phase-II will generate to ensure Bangaloreans get the quantity needed,” a BWSSB official said. This figure also takes into account the approximate growth in population in the City during that period.
BWSSB was able to meet the City’s requirement comfortably in 2002 when the population was six million. The fast growth of the City with its 8 million population (including floating crowd) now has resulted in the water shortage, the official added.
If the T G halli reservoir gets filled to its storage capacity of 74 feet, it could ease the situation in a big way. But the reservoir has water only upto a depth of 21 feet presently, the official said.
Future plans
A serious situation is in store after meeting the required supply four years down the line since all available resources of water would have been exhausted by then. “The water generated by the project’s second phase would meet the population’s needs for five years.” After that, the clear option left would be the recycling of waste water and converting it into water fit for potable purposes by passing it through ultrafiltration processes,” said another source.
Resistance
If there is stiff resistance to ultrafiltered water, then a unique method can be deployed to take water from the Nethravati river. To overcome the opposition by environmental groups to the construction of a dam here, BWSSB has plans to sink a jackwall on the bed where the Arabian Sea joins the Nethravati river. The water would then be taken by pipelines to Bangalore, he said.
And if that also does not fructify, then a desalination plant could be constructed at Mangalore to draw water from the Arabian Sea. The purified water can be pumped to Bangalore.
