Urban News

The Deccan Chronicle  13.10.2010

Oct. 12: The call centre at the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has been flooded with complaints as several parts of the city did not get water as major water supply pumps were shut last week due to technical glitches.

The BWSSB has received complaints regarding shortage of water from areas across the city including Marathahalli, Vidyaranyapuram,Girinagar, Cottonpet, Chikpet and Cubbonpet. The glitch occurred last Thursday and continued on Friday. The pumps at the Cauvery fourth stage 1st phase were shut down due to technical problems and the valves remained closed between 3 pm and 11 pm on October 7. According to chief engineer of the Cauvery project Narayan, “The board had already began work on Cauvery fourth stage, second phase but the censor rod had fallen from the 1st phase work, and the flow metre was arrested leading to a leak in the cover valve.”

While the engineers fixed the problem on Thursday, the problems resurfaced on Friday, October 8, and the pumps were shut once again at 11 am and it took the engineers another 10 hours to fix the glitch. As the pumps were shut for two days in a row, the BWSSB, which usually supplies 900 mld of water per day, was short of 120 mld on Friday and again on Sunday, it was short of 100 mld of water. The other source of water — the TG Halli reservoir — contains merely 19 feet of water as against the 30 feet of water it had last year. The reservoir provides just18 MLD of water.

As both TG Halli and Cauvery projects were not providing water at their maximum capacity, several areas in the city did not get water. Water is supplied in many parts of the city only every alternate day and these places suffered the most. The areas include the BTM layout, JP Nagar, Vidyaranyapuram, Domlur, Hoodi, Rajajinagar and Nagarbhavi.

Meanwhile, BWSSB chief engineer Venkatraju claimed that water supply had been restored. “The supply of water has been resumed and the board has sent 45 tankers of water to areas that were worst hit by the recent shortage,” he said.

Hindustan Times  12.10.2010

The Central Water Commission (CWC) has cleared the Gargai project that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to begin within two years. The BMC is banking on the water project to augment the city’s water supply and to also bridge the gap between the demand and supply of water in the city.

The plan is to build a dam on the river Gargai (about 120 km north of Mumbai) and the water from this river will flow into Middle Vaitarna, which can be brought to the city via the existing distribution network.

Gargai is a tributary of the Vaitarna river.

The CWC is a premier technical organisation of India in the field of water resources and is presently functioning as an attached office of the ministry of water resources in the government of India.

“Now that we have got CWC clearance, we are trying to work things out with NEERI for an environment assessment of the project,” a senior civic official said. The CWC has asked BMC to keep them in the loop while going ahead with other aspects of the project and also to submit a progress report of the project regularly.

The feasibility report by the consultants of the project states that the project would give the city an additional 440 MLD.

He also added that once the environment impact study was done, the BMC would apply for environment clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forest department (MoEF).

Currently, the city’s demand is 4,200 million litres daily, while supply is 3,350 million litres daily.

The original target set by the Chitale Committee report for this project was 2020. “We plan to start the project by 2012 after we complete the Middle Vaitarna project. And, we want to complete the project by 2016,” said PR Ajgaonkar, chief engineer, water supply projects.

As of October 11, the city has 12.63 lakh million litres of water in all six lakes that supply water to the city.