Deccan Chronicle 08.09.2009

Harvesting rain: State to act

Bengaluru, Sept. 7: With impending climactic catastrophes, the city is keen to make its citizens adopt the rainwater harvesting system. To this effect, the new Rainwater Harvesting Act has amended the conditions required to extend the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) connection for existing buildings on sites measuring 60x40 and above. As per the act passed on August 17, the buildings will have to mandatorily make provisions for rainwater harvesting within nine months to retain the connection. Earlier, only new buildings to be constructed on sites with dimensions more than 30x60 needed to adopt the rainwater harvesting system.

At present, only one per cent of the total properties in Bengaluru – a mere 16,000 buildings – have rainwater harvesting structures. BWSSB meets the water requirements of 40 to 45 per cent of the city covering 300 sq km out of 800.29 sq km. Though the city faces a shortage of 255 million litres per day (MLD), only one per cent of 3000 MLD of rainwater is utilised every year. 43 per cent, that is 408 mld of water, supplied by BWSSB is ‘unaccounted for’ due to leakage and 20 per cent of the borewells in the city have gone dry. 80 per cent of the ground water in the city is also contaminated with nitrates and fluorides, along with chromium, lead, aluminum, copper and bacteria.

The 11-member committee formed by BWSSB is headed by chief engineer Kemparamaiah and comprises rainwater harvesting experts A.R. Shivakumar, executive secretary of Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Vishwanath, advisor to ‘Arghyam’, and retired commissioner of ground water resources commission Ramasheshan and eight other BWSSB officials. They will formulate regulations for the implementation of the act in the city. The committee has already had six meetings and is working out strategies to make the regulations more feasible for the implementation. The committee also visited Chennai, where the act had been implemented earlier, to study the challenges faced. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Mr Vishwanath, said, “We will submit the report this weekend. We also plan to educate those who fail to adopt the rainwater harvesting system, rather than ordering penalties in the initial phase. While construction of recharge structures for harvesting rainwater and recharging ground water at road intersection points and flyovers are a part of the approach, the focus of the legislation is mainly towards those homes and apartments which have a BWSSB connection.” Once the report is furnished, BWSSB intends to conduct a poll to make the act people-friendly before it is printed in the gazette. The regulation will be implemented a month after that, BWSSB sources said.