Water is an extremely essential natural
resource needed for the survival of all life on this planet. Planet Earth is an
aqueous planet since 75 % of planet’s surface is covered by water. 97 % of all water
is in the oceans, 2 % in polar ice caps and only 1 % is available as fresh water.
Partly as surface water & partly as ground water.
The sum total of water on our planet is
constant. Water plays very important role in the natural cycle of life. Life on
the planet started in the oceans and civilisations have grown around water
sources, and have fallen when the water dried out.
India has about 18% of the world’s population,
but only 4% of the world’s fresh water. Rivers are rainfall are India’s prime
source of water. The average annual rainfall in India is about 1120mm. Within
our state of Maharashtra, it is about 1300mm on average, but varies from 400mm
to 6000mm across the state.
Using the state average of 1300 mm, the average
annual RWH potential per acre is roughly 4.4 million litres. The average annual
rain fall for Pune city is 770 mm. Every year, 1 million sq mtrs of rooftop is
added to Pune. If RWH was only implemented on
new buildings, even that would add 700 Million Ltrs of recharge every
year. However, RWH isn’t implemented, and increasing concretisation means that
rainwater percolation is reducing rapidly. Over extraction of ground water means
that our wells are depleting faster than nature can ever fill them back.
Water Assets of
Pune: Three
natural rivers, Mula, Mutha & Pavana, flow through Pune. There are 4 dams -
Khadakwasala, Panshet, Varasgaon & Temghar supplying water to Pune. There
are also about 10,000 bore wells & 1000 open wells in the city.
Water Usage:
Agriculture 70 %
Industry 22 %
Domestic 8 %
Every citizen is required to be supplied with 135
litres of water daily. However , the PMC supply varies from 60 litres PDPP to
350 litres PDPP.
Status Of Water
Assets – as per
MPCB report, all the rivers are highly polluted due to ingress of untreated
domestic sewage, untreated Industrial effluent & agriculture run off.
The current water crisis in Pune is due to
following reasons:
- 40 % transportation losses due to old leaking pipes & no replacement policy
- None of our dams have been de-silted resulting in reservoir capacity falling by almost 30 %
- River pollution due to ingress of all types of effluent & sewage
- Unequal water distribution by PMC to the citizens
- Lack of infrastructure to treat 100 % domestic sewage, which flows into rivers
- Non implementation of Govt of Maharashtra GR titled SHIV KAALIN PAANI SATHAVAN YOJANA , dated Feb 2002, making it mandatory for all Govt & Public building to implement Roof Top water harvesting system ( RWH ) with effect from Feb 2002.
- Rise of city population from 5 lakh in 1950 to about 40 lakh in 2014, putting pressure on natural resource like water.
Solutions
to overcome water crisis:
- Assessment of all water assets of areas under development.
- Planned development of domestic sewage treatment plant with 25 % of additional capacity to cater for migrant population.
- Time bound addition to sewage treatment infrastructure to cater for additional population.
- Policy on water transportation from reservoir to filtration plants, with fixed time replacement of pipes, to minimise water loss in transportation.
- Planning & execution of water distribution system to ensure equal water distribution to citizen.
- Strict implementation of policies to prevent ingress of untreated industrial & commercial effluent into river bodies to ensure minimum water pollution.
- Implementation of Govt of Maharashtra GR & PMC guide lines on Roof Top RWH in a time bound program.
- Guidelines on registration of existing & new borewells. Sanction for new bore well must be with the undertaking that the borewell will be recharged using RWH methods.
- All MIDC units must implement RWH methods to meet major part of their water needs, this will help improve local area water table. At present Industry has to buy water from MIDC. Due to this policy huge amount rainwater is wasted; putting pressure already water stressed resources. Once RWH policy is implemented, Industry water demand will reduce from present 22 % to about 10 %.
- Recycling of grey water in the housing societies to reuse for gardening, washing, bating purpose. All new buildings must have grey water recycling system.
- Construction of recharge pits in storm water drains to ensure more rain water is recharged to improve ground water level.
- Introduction of water conservation policy, washing of vehicles should be banned in the residential areas; it should only be done in the servicing stations. Take a case of Pune, it has about 3 million registered vehicles of all types, even if 2 to 3 litres of water is used daily it amounts 6 to 9 million litres of corporation water being wasted. Comprehensive conservation policy needs to be formed to conserve the water.
Unsafe water
affects health of citizens, and a lack of water can cause severe problems for
Pune. For overall growth of any city it is essential that water management
needs to be given top most priority.
Failure to do this promptly will only result
in tragedy, that could have been easily avoided !
