Bangalore wastes twice the water Mysore consumes every day

Ever since its founding, Bangalore has always had to face water shortage. But the first recorded water shortage was sometime in the 1870s when several tanks were dug and the Hesarghatta reservoir was commissioned.

Yet, even almost one hundred and fifty years after the first water scarcity, Bangalore has never been able to quench the thirst of its citizens. Today, we have four stages of Cauvery, TG Halli and ground water.

All the water sources put together have not been able to meet the demands of the people. What makes the water situation worse is that 50.9 per cent of the City’s drinking water is allowed to go waste. This may sound incredulous but this is a fact and it has been validated by none other than the Union Ministry of Urban Development.

The Union Ministry, in a nation wide survey of twenty eight cities, ranked Delhi as the city wasting the maximum quantity of water. Delhi was followed by Bangalore and then Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

If Delhi wasted a little over 52 per cent of the water supplied to it, Bangalore with no major source of drinking water nearby, was equally generous-wasting 50.9 per cent  of the water supplied.    

The rest of the cities wasted anything between 13 per cent to 50 per cent and even among the 28 cities, the mega cities of Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkota, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad took the honors, outdoing other cities and leading in the wastage race by a huge margin.

A bigger metropolis like Mumbai was estimated to waste a little over 13 per cent. Chennai was seventeen percent and both these cities have oceans adjacent to them, while Bangalore has no such luxury.  

The study also says that only 50.8 per cent of Bangalore’s population has access to piped water supply. The rest depend on unorganised water supply sources like open wells and bore wells.
The wasted water, which can be classified as non-revenue water, is fed into the system and it does not reach the consumer. The reasons are many: pilferage, leak in pipes, theft, illegal diversion and even non-metering.
The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), which manages Bangalore’s water supply, has managed to meter  97 per cent households it supplies water too. However, it has not bee as successful in reducing wastage.
Bangalore gets 900 million litres of water per day (MLD) against a demand of 1,125 MLD. In addition to this, the BWSSB is gearing itself up to provide 45,000 new water connections. This doubles the pressure on water supply and the BWSSB has been struggling to meet the demand for water.

Last year, the water scarcity reached such proportions that this May, the BWSSB had to switch off its pumps for the first time in 30 years.

Former Additional Chief Secretary V Balasubramanian has gone on record saying that Bangalore needs Rs 26,000 crores to purify its water. Of this, Rs 5,000 crores is required to re-acquire encroached lakes, while at least Rs 10,000 crores in urgently wanted for developing  850 km of stormwater drain (rajakaluve) and Rs 2,750 crores for sewage treatment plants.
The BWSSB, however, has its own figures. It says it supplies close to 1,100 MLD to Bangalore  everyday and loses 396 MLD in transmission and distribution — with a loss percentage of 36 per cent.

Very few people know that the water loss between Cauvery and bulk storage reservoirs in Bangalore account for less than 3 per cent. The water treatment plant at TK Halli from where Cauvery is pumped to Bangalore is situated 400 metres below Bangalore. The distance between TK Halli and Bangalore is about 94 km. Therefore, water is pumped to Bangalore through three stages of pumping-TK Halli pumping station, Harohalli  and Thataguni.

From Tataguni, water is pumped to 55 ground level reservoirs and from them to the consumers.   

The leak till the ground level reservoir is less than three per cent. The bulk of the loss of water has been traced to the distribution system of over 5000 kms of pipeline, which is old. Other reasons are theft, water supply to 500 odd slums and in other cases unmetered connections.

Consider another fact. Mysore consumes 180 MLD of water every day and Bangalore loses twice the quantity every day.

A project to curb these losses to 16 per cent is expected to finish only by 2015. This project is being taken up in six Assembly constituencies of Basavanagudi, Chamarajpet, Padmanabhanagar, Jayanagar, BTM Layout and Bangalore South to get data on unaccounted water. The project would be completed in 18 months.

Other measures by the water board which include compulsory registration of borewells and compulsory rainwater harvesting have met with limited success.

How Cauvery came to Bangalore

When Indian attained Independence, the Civil and Military Station or rather Cantonment area which was controlled by the British and the Pettah or Pete area of Bangalore came to be merged under a single entity called Bangalore City Corporation.

The State Government passed an act merging both the municipalities of the Civil and Military Station and the Pettah areas. One of the first acts of the now undivided Municipality as also the Government was to come up with a viable, fool proof and long term water supply to Bangalore.

Then, Bangalore was being supplied water from the TG Halli, Hesarghatta and several tanks and lakes. By then, the Dharmambudhi tank had already dried up and the erstwhile municipality had allotted sites to people on its tank bed. The dry tank was being used as an open ground where national leaders like Gandhi, Nehru gave speeches and exhibitions and circuses were being held.

The British had constructed Millers and Sankey tanks to supply drinking water to Bangalore. Constructed in 1882, Sankey tank then cost Rs 5,75,000. It was linked to the Miller's tank and also Dharmambudhi tank.  The Millers tank was really huge. It too was supplying drinking water and residents preferred this water to Sankey as the quality was much better.

The Government decided to go in for a more reliable source of water to Bangalore. Even as discussions were on about which source of water to tap and how, the State Government in 1958 constituted an Expert Committee to go into the issue.

The committee was also asked to study which of the following sources would be the better to tap. The sources were: 1) Arkavathy river downstream of  T.G.Halli reservoir 2) Hemavathy River c) Shimsha River and d) Cauvery River.

The committee felt it would be better to tap the Cauvery as it had better potential in meeting Bangalore’s needs. It also said the Cauvery could be depended upon for further tapping of water as against the limited capacity of the other three rivers. The Government accepted the proposal and on April 1964 granted administrative approval for bringing Cauvery to Bangalore.

This was how the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme (CWSS) commenced and the first stage was estimated to cost Rs.22 crores.

Work on the first stage commenced during 1969 and it was completed in five years. On January 24, 1974, Bangalore received its first drop of Cauvery water.

However, the first stage barely quenched the thirst of Bangaloreans and the Government then along with the BWSSB decided to go in for the second stage to augment water supply. The work on the second stage costed Rs. 65.50 crores and it was taken up and completed during 1979 to 1982.

When even the second stage failed to bridge the growing demand for water, the BWSSB decided to go in for the third stage. Work began in 1985 and it was completed in May 1993. The total cost of the third stage was Rs. 240 crores and it brought in an additional 270 MLD of Cauvery into the City’s taps.

The total water supplied to Bangalore by all the three stages put together was 540 MLD but this too proved inadequate, forcing the BWSSB to go in for another stage to get more water.

Bringing Cauvery to Bangalore from the source at TK Halli in Kanakapura is an expensive proposition. The distance is about 100 kilometres and the Cauvery has to be pumped over a gradient in three stages of 500 feet each. The cost of pumping so much is about Rs. 400 crores, which forms a substantial chunk of the water board’s finances.

Today, the State cannot draw any more water from the Cauvery to supply water to Bangalore, It has to look at alternatives and there are plenty. Apart from tapping fresh sources, water conservation techniques such as rain water harvesting, recharging ground water, recycling waste water, segregating water for domestic and non-domestic uses, plugging leakages, modernizing the water supply and drainage system would go a long way in ensuring better water supply.