Chennai: As
the city heads to one of its worst droughts come summer, former
engineering director of Chennai metro water S. Sundaramurthy on Tues­day
urged the autho­rities to emulate California model of water management
to keep acute water crisis at bay.

Orange County near
California gets only 50 percentile of the rain Chennai city gets, but
the people there get 250lpcd (liters per capita per day), whereas people
here struggle to get 100lpcd, Sundaramurthy said during the
announcement of the 8th edition of Water Today’s three-day “Water Expo”
to be held at Chennai Trade Centre from January 20.

By arresting
the flow of sewage in to ocean and in­jecting the same into the ground
at a depth of 400 meters using injection wells, groundwater would get
recharged and the same could be tapped through bore wells years later,
the IIT-M educated engineer who headed the CMWSSB engineering
de­p­artment in 1990s said.

Pointing out that in-built sewage
treatment facilities in several multi-storied residential complexes on
ECR were no good, Sundaramurthy said advising CMWSSB to pump sewage from
the private townships using its tankers and treat the same on
collection of a fee from the residences there.

S. Shanmugham,
managing director Water Today Pvt Ltd and Naina Shah, editor, Water
Today, said the water expo and its conferences would open new vistas to
the public and private players in water and sewage management by
bringing multi-national technology partners to the city.