Water scarcity: Will B'luru become the next Cape Town?

Cape Town, South Africa's second largest city, is running out of water as it enters the fourth consecutive year of drought. On so-called "Day Zero", expected to occur in mid-May, the water supply reservoirs will run so low that the city will be forced to turn off municipal water supply to its four million residents. A BBC news report has named Bengaluru as one of the 11 other cities in the world that could face a similar crisis.

Though news reports refer to Cape Town as the "first major city in the modern era to run out of drinking water", the same situation, in fact, occurred in Chennai in 2003-2004, when piped supply was shut off for several months. We already know what Day Zero would look like in India:  Private tankers and deep borewells will supply the rich, while the poor and middle class will have to line up for government tankers. But for many Bengaluru residents, Day Zero is already here. Large parts of the city, including some new upscale suburbs, don't receive piped water supply.

Most recently, Bengaluru witnessed riots over Cauvery water sharing in 2016 and had faced severe cutbacks during the 2012 drought. Currently, almost all of Bengaluru's water comes from a single source, the Cauvery river. The city gets about 1,350 million litres a day (MLD) to serve the needs of its 12 million residents. Since Bengaluru's share of the Cauvery is accorded the highest priority, the current allocation cannot be cut back too much in dry years. Also, an estimated 400-600 MLD is sourced from groundwater via private borewells. This adds up to over 150 litres per capita per day.

Bengaluru's water situation should worry us. The city cannot increase its dependence on the Cauvery because of the limits placed first by the Cauvery Water Tribunal, only slightly relaxed now by the Supreme Court. If the population swells to 20 million by 2030, where will the extra water needed come from? The Master Plan for the city envisions getting water from the west flowing rivers over the Western Ghats. But past experience with such schemes suggests they are expensive, contentious and may take decades to build.

There is a case to be made that Bengaluru's water situation is largely one of poor management. Addressing the problem requires not just a technical fix but a fundamental rethinking of urban water supply institutions.

First, it is argued that almost half of the Cauvery supply to Bengaluru is lost via pipeline leaks. This, however, is not the biggest problem. The leaks recharge groundwater, which is extracted back via borewells. While the leaks are undesirable because of pumping costs and contamination concerns, they won't cause a Cape Town-like crisis. Indeed, without the recharge from leaky pipes, Bengaluru would not be able to sustain the current level of groundwater abstraction.

The bigger problem is wasteful use. Again, popular rhetoric that focuses on taking shorter showers and turning off taps misses the mark. Indoor water use generates wastewater that, in theory at least, can be recycled or reused downstream. In contrast, outdoor water use, in lawns and gardens, is lost to evaporation. As the city's green cover changes from trees to irrigated lawns and manicured landscapes, outdoor water is going to be substantial. At present, we do not even have an idea of how much water is used in urban irrigation, or how to reduce or regulate it.

Second, the current approach of importing water from distant sources and disposing the wastewater as far from the city as possible is fundamentally flawed. Importing water from the west-flowing rivers, over the Western Ghats, will come at a steep ecological cost, irreversibly destroying habitats in one of the world's last remaining biodiversity hotspots. Embarking on  inter-basin transfers without evaluating existing projects to understand what works and what doesn't is irresponsible.

Instead, many cities in the world are moving towards Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM). The idea is to harvest rainwater, use water efficiently and recycle wastewater. These sources must be stored in local ground and surface reservoirs. Studies show that conjunctive use of groundwater, wastewater and storm water can go a long way in ensuring Bengaluru remains water-secure. Bengaluru's lake system is a logical place to store treated wastewater, but our current laws do not allow lake water to be abstracted and blended with Cauvery supply. Groundwater use is completely unregulated.

Rigid system

Third, crises do not occur in average years but during prolonged droughts. At present, Bengaluru is cushioned from droughts because Indian law prioritises "drinking" water. The current system has two flaws. Drinking water is not the same as urban water. In reality, Cauvery water also goes to industry, technology parks and hotels. Furthermore, the system is rigid. It doesn't allow cities that have less flexible water demand (everybody must bathe, wash and poop everyday) but a greater ability to pay to negotiate with farmers who have more flexible water demand (they can fallow and switch crop) but have a lower ability to pay.

Riots occur in part because farmers resent the water going to luxury uses while they suffer losses. The knee-jerk political response is to suddenly cut back urban water supply, imposing steep costs on the economy. In this case, market approaches to shortage sharing (common in other countries) might be effective. One idea might be to create a drought fund, where money is set aside by the city in wet years, to compensate farmers and agricultural labourers during droughts.

There are ways to ensure that Bengaluru does not become the next Cape Town. The answer does not lie in blindly building infrastructure projects without understanding the cost. Instead, we must reform our institutions to allow IUWM. We must look at a portfolio of soft (pricing, markets) and hard (infrastructure) options. We must document best management practices and showcase success stories. Finally, we must spend 3-5% of our infrastructure budget on post-facto monitoring and evaluation; at present, these budgets largely remain unutilised.

Whether Bengaluru will in the future become another Cape Town or not depends on how we collectively endeavour to address the problem in the present.

(The writer is Fellow, Centre for Environment and Development, ATREE)