The Hindu        15.10.2014 

Water supply likely to be restored today

Due to lack of power, residents are back to the old hand pumps for water in the aftermath of cyclone Hudhud in Visakhapatnam on Tuesday.— Photo: C. V. SUBRAHMANYAM

With supply by tankers inadequate and citizens having to struggle to get water for the second day running in the aftermath of Cyclone Hudhud, GVMC is getting its act together. Officials hope that by Wednesday morning normal supply to households will be restored.

“We are readying a total of 24 generators of 750 KVa and 500 KVa capacities at various pumping stations. There is every possibility of EPDCL restoring power supply at Narava filtering station and Thatipudi reservoir. With these arrangements in place we are confident that water supply can be restored by Wednesday morning,” Principal Secretary (Municipal Administration and Urban Development) and Special Officer of GVMC D. Sambasiva Rao told The Hindu . The generators will be installed at Gosthani, Krishnapuram and other areas to pump water. There is no dearth of funds and so far Rs.3.5 crore has been released.

With 182 trips of water tankers on Monday, the supply was hardly adequate to meet the demand. On Tuesday, the trips will be increased to 400. Priority is given to slums and hilly areas. However, with uprooted trees and electric poles it is difficult to reach the areas and power saws are limited in number. A total of 5,000 workers are pressed into service for various cyclone-related work. Besides, auto rickshaws are also carrying water from the municipal service reservoir. The Visakhapatnam Port Trust has offered four tankers of 6,000-litre capacity to enable GVMC store diesel.

With no municipal water supply people are queuing up at manual bore wells to get water where it’s a long wait to get water. However, the increase in groundwater levels has made getting water easy.

Mobile gen-sets

With no power and most of the residents dependent on borewell supply, in some areas mobile generators are brought to the doorstep of residents. An exorbitant Re.1 per litre is charged to pump water to the tanks.

he Hindu      15.10.2014  

Segregation of waste at source is the key

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s plan to reopen Mavallipura landfill is facing opposition from neighbouring village residents.— File Photo: G.P. Sampath Kumar

Solid waste management situation in the city is a ticking bomb with Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) obligated to discontinue dumping of city’s waste at Mandur from December 1.

With just 45 days away, the six new garbage processing units on the city’s outskirts that are to take the burden away from Mandur, are yet to become operational. It is a hard battle to get all these six units completely operational by December 1, officials concede, raising fears over the units getting converted into dumping yards.

The six garbage processing units are outsourced to private companies and are to convert wet waste into compost. Earlier experiment of waste-to-energy that failed has been done away with now.

BBMP officials claim that these processing units coming up have technology to segregate waste. However, they add that as around 40 per cent of the waste is dry waste, segregating it at the unit would also lead to additional costs and segregation at source was the best option out.

Waste management experts aver that key to the success of any processing unit is segregation of waste. However, segregation of waste at source has woefully failed in Bangalore, both due to systemic neglect and lack of response from citizens.

While BBMP’s waste segregation campaign at source failed, no further campaign to educate the public on segregation has been taken up. Experts point out that BBMP does not have in place a system to ensure segregation and collection of segregated waste.

Meanwhile, BBMP’s plan to reopen Mavallipura is facing opposition, especially from residents in 12 villages around the landfill site. Village residents have been protesting against BBMP as the leachete had polluted the groundwater.

Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) has put brakes on BBMP’s revival plans, which are yet to be cleared by the Airport Authority of India since the landfill site is close to Kempegowda International Airport in Devanahalli

However, despite all assurances and promises to tackle the situation, citizens now are left wondering if the civic authority will be able to handle the imminent crisis.

‘Short-sighted’

Experts have complained the government was being short sighted and just spreading the Mandur crisis to six different locations.

Ashwin Mahesh from Loksatta Party questioned why the city’s waste was being taken out of Bangalore. “If the processing units were so safe, why are they being set up on the city’s outskirts?” he asked. The crisis cannot be resolved until the only solution was to take the garbage out of the city, he said and added that decentralisation of garbage processing was the only viable solution.

BBMP officials claim that there are plans to establish processing unit in each Assembly constituency now that BMTC is all set to hand over 223 acres of its land to the civic authority.

Reporting by

K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj

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