24
ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY
Bengaluru, one-time
City of Lakes, now
thirsting for water
Bengaluru’s drinking water crisis is exacerbated
by population and infrastructure growth in India’s
technological hub.
By Abdul Matheen
Russ Chaney
In the spirit of the sharing
of unique experiences
that shape the plumbing
industries in our
respective nations, the
following article looks at
how Bengaluru, India’s
technological hub, is
facing an imminent water
crisis. Written by Abdul
Matheen, director of India
Product Certification for
IAPMO India, it is the
next in a regular series of
articles that will run in
this magazine.
Karnataka’s capital, Bengaluru, also known as the
Silicon Valley of India, was once a lake city of India.
In the early 19th century, Bengaluru had multiple
sources of water supply from 200 lakes with a
storage capacity of 35 Tmc-Ft of water. (1 Tmc-Ft
= 1 billion cubic feet of water.) These abundant
water sources from reservoirs and tanks, such
as the Arkavathi river basin — the Hesaraghatta
Lake in the north and the Thippagondanahalli
Reservoir in the west — are all but dead now due
to the depletion of catchment areas in the wake of
booming real estate and unrestrained infrastructure
expansion. This makes Bengaluru critically
dependent on the Cauvery basin — situated in the
neighbouring city of Mysore about 100km away.
Bengaluru is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan
cities in India, the third-most populous city, and the
fifth-largest metropolitan area in the nation. Bengaluru’s
population has more than doubled from five million in
2001 to 12 million in 2017. A recent McKinsey study
says that by 2020, Bengaluru will become the single-
largest IT cluster on the planet — overtaking Silicon
Valley — with two million IT professionals, six million
indirect IT jobs, and USD80-billion in IT exports, as
growing opportunities in IT, biotech, and other fields have
drawn young, educated professionals from around India.
Some have even started to return from Silicon Valley. At
an annual average growth rate of 4.23%, Bengaluru’s
population is expected to reach approximately 21 million
by 2030 — as much as the current populations of
Switzerland, France, Turkey, and Sri Lanka — according
to projections.
Bengaluru has faced harsh drinking water crises in the
past, especially during summer seasons. A lot could
January 2019 Volume 25 I Number 1
have been learnt and the situation could have been
improved. Though the state government claims to have
plans to spend Rs 5 500 crore (5.5 billion INR) by 2023
to increase water availability for Bengaluru to 2 175
million litres per day (MLD) from the current 1 391
MLD, not everyone is enthused. In fact, the 1 391 MLD
comprises 678 MLD of Cauvery River water, 672 MLD
of groundwater, and 41 MLD of recycled water. A recent
report has suggested Bengaluru could be doomed, like
Cape Town in South Africa, to face the threat of running
out of drinking water. Government officials say the
shortage of water is a very real problem, particularly
in the peripheral areas of the city, which are already
dependent on tankers for drinking water supply. These
tankers get their supply from bore wells, but as demand
increases, they are being forced to dig deeper and
deeper to find water.
The fact that Bengaluru is under ‘water stress’ cannot
be denied. The term is used to refer to any pressure on
water resources that causes problems, such as water
shortages in Bengaluru and many large water-stressed
Indian cities. India is projected to fall 50% short of its
freshwater needs by 2030, as per a 2010 study by the
Asian Development Bank. Another recent study by the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) put Bengaluru on
a list of 11 major cities in the modern era likely to run
out of drinking water.
Local officials in the southern Indian city have been
surprised by the growth of new property developments
following Bengaluru’s rise as a technological hub and
are struggling to manage the city’s water and sewage
systems. Bengaluru in the past few years alone has
absorbed more than 100 villages into its rapidly
expanding metropolis.
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