Quenching Bengaluru’s ever-growing thirst, from 100 km away

As the Cauvery V Stage is commissioned and piped water supply starts to 110 villages around Bengaluru, The Hindu reports on the teething problems of the project and larger concerns of the city’s over reliance on the Cauvery

The long wait, during which time he had to count every drop of water and pay a hefty price to source it from tankers and borewells, came to an end last week for Lakshman Narayan, a resident of Gottigere, a suburb to the south of Bengaluru. As the State government commissioned Cauvery V Stage on October 16, Lakshman’s house now gets a piped supply of Cauvery water on alternate days.

“We availed ourselves of the water connection three years ago from the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and waited for the water since then. It has been a long wait. During summers, we would spend over ₹5,000 every month on tankers and it was such an ordeal to even source them. Now, the days of tankers has ended for our neighbourhood,” says Lakshman.

The 110 villages around Bengaluru city that fast urbanised and were brought under the city corporation’s limits in 2007 had to wait for almost two decades to get piped water supply.

The BWSSB has been supplying piped water to 10.64 lakh connections in the city by implementing four stages of the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme, drawing 1,450 million litres per day (MLD) (around 19 tmcft annually) till date and earning a monthly revenue of around ₹100 crore in water tariffs. Now, with the Cauvery V Stage being commissioned, the BWSSB aims to serve at least 4 lakh more connections, drawing 775 MLD (around 10 tmcft annually) in these 110 villages, and is expected to increase its monthly revenue to ₹140 crore.

The project involves bringing water from the Cauvery, around 110 km away from the city. Work on the project, which cost around ₹4,600 crore, started in 2018. The board expects to recoup this investment over the next 30 years to repay the loan from the Japan International Cooperative Agency, which funded the project. The project faced several hurdles, including land acquisition and labour issues during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The project was finally commissioned earlier this month.

As part of the new project,three advanced booster pumping stations have been constructed at Thorekadanahalli (T.K. Halli) in Malavalli taluk of Mandya district, Harohalli to the South of Bengaluru in Ramanagara district, and Tataguni on the city’s outskirts. These stations will pump water to an elevation of 450 metres — about the height of a 50-storey building — through steel pipes ranging from 500 mm to 2,200 mm in diameter, covering a distance of 110 km to Bengaluru.

The board has been giving individual connections under the Cauvery V Stage since 2019 and only 55,000-odd households have availed themselves of the connections till now. Presently, the board is drawing only 150 MLD of water from the Cauvery to serve these connections and will draw more water as and when more connections are availed of by residents, say sources.

“The number of those who had availed themselves of connections was low probably because we were not supplying water yet. But now we expect more people to take connections,” says V. Ram Prasath Manohar, BWSSB Chairman. The board has launched a campaign appealing to households in these areas to take connections and expects that at least 3 lakh more connections will be taken in due course.

The BWSSB charges ₹400 per square metre (10.8 sq. ft) for domestic connections, for both independent houses and apartment complexes, and ₹600 per sq. m for commercial connections.

Teething problems remain

The government claims it will provide piped water supply to all households that take connections under the Cauvery V Stage project. However, that is not the case on the ground yet.

For instance, at Dasarahalli in north-west Bengaluru, while the main pipelines have been laid, the distribution channels are not yet drawn. “We are yet to receive a connection. They are saying it will take five months for the completion of the work in our area. We want a connection, but the BWSSB is not fully ready yet,” says Rakesh Shetty, who lives in an independent house at Dasarahalli.

Former Engineer-in-Chief of the BWSSB Thippeswamy M.N. claims that around 40% of the distribution channel network is yet to be completed and the number of connections taken is still very low.

Apartment residents complain of high charges

Several apartment communities have been complaining of high charges for taking water connections, owing to which there has been a lack of enthusiasm towards the same. The BWSSB does not provide individual connections and meter consumption for individual flats but treats the entire apartment as one connection, which many communities have now taken objection to.

Ramesh K., a resident of Hemmigepura in south Bengaluru, says their estimates show that under the present system, each flat will have to bear up to ₹1.3 lakh to take a water connection to their apartment community. “Many are apprehensive of the steep cost. Many also express doubts on the frequency of water supply and its reliability after investing the money,” he says. 

Vani Suresh, a resident of Shobha Suncrest apartment at Vajarahalli in South Bengaluru, says a BWSSB water connection to their apartment community is estimated to cost more than a crore. “The RWA here thinks using borewell water and supplementing it with tankers during a crisis is more cost-effective than taking a Cauvery connection,” she says. The community has written to the BWSSB seeking individual connections and meters to flats.

However, a senior BWSSB official says the demand of flat owners for installing individual meters is impractical because water will not go up through the distribution channel of the water board. The pipeline system is designed for ground-plus-first floor and not for high-rise buildings of the city. The water will be dumped into underground tanks, lifted to overhead tanks and then supplied to the flats. The BWSSB cannot bill for the water moving down to homes from the tanks. “The board has informed the residents about this challenge and it is high time they understood the problem,” says a senior official.

‘BWSSB water connection viable in the long run’

The BWSSB Chairman argues that taking water connections from the board will be cost-effective for even apartment communities in the long run.

Subhash Shetty from Chikkabidarakallu in north-west Bengaluru,a resident of an apartment community with over 1,000 flats which has taken the BWSSB connection under the Cauvery IV Stage, says while there had been objections to the high cost of taking a water connection to their apartment (around ₹6 crore), in the hindsight, it had saved them a lot of money. “Each household paid around ₹65,000 to get the water connection. The water bill for our community comes up to around ₹2 lakh a month. A nearby apartment that has not availed the connection had to buy around 70 tankers of water during the summer crisis this year and their water bill ran up to a whopping ₹50 lakh this summer. Cauvery water is cheaper than tanker water,” he says. 

Farmers raise concerns

Even before the V stage project was commissioned, the BWSSB had commissioned a detailed project report for the Cauvery VI Stage project. Under the next phase, the board seeks to draw 500 MLD (around 6.5 tmcft annually) from the river to provide drinking water supply to towns around Bengaluru such as Hoskote, Nelamangala, Doddaballapur, Devanahalli, Anekal, Sarjapur, and Bidadi. This project will cost around ₹5,200 crore, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced.

As per the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT), as modified by the Supreme Court in 2018, 33 tmcft of water is set aside for drinking purposes in the Cauvery basin in Karnataka, including Bengaluru. Particularly for Bengaluru, the CWDT had earmarked only 18.25 tmcft. Karnataka challenged this in the Supreme Court, seeking an allocation of 30 tmcft for the city. However, the apex court increased it only by 4.75 tmcft in 2018. This pegs the allocation of the Cauvery water for Bengaluru at 23 tmcft annually.

At present, for the four stages of the Cauvery water supply scheme, Bengaluru is drawing around 19 tmcft of water annually. Cauvery V Stage, when it is fully operational, will utilise around 10 tmcft more every year, overshooting the allocation for the city. Cauvery VI Stage will draw around 6 tmcft of water more. This will take the utilisation to 35 tmcft, overshooting 33 tmcft allocated for drinking proposes of the entire Cauvery basin in the State.

“Successive governments have been prioritising urban needs over agricultural and rural needs in the Cauvery basin, using the argument that drinking needs should take precedence. But Bengaluru and its surrounding towns are already drinking water meant for irrigation in the Cauvery basin. We will oppose any move to further divert water meant for us to cities,” says Kurubur Shanthakumar, a farmer leader from Mandya district and president of the Karnataka State Sugarcane Growers’ Association.

‘High time Bengalureans used water judiciously’

Given that Bengaluru is already utilising a big chunk of the Cauvery water and the river has also become increasingly non-reliable for water supply owing to factors such as climate change, there have been multiple calls and policies to nudge Bengalureans to utilise water resources more judiciously.

For instance, the 2019-20 State Budget promised to launch the ‘Mattondu Cauvery’ initiative, which aims to harness as much water we get from the Cauvery locally through rainwater harvesting, watershed management, groundwater table, and using treated wastewater. However, none of these initiatives has taken off.

“We have been drinking the water share of farmers around Bengaluru and pushing them to agricultural distress. It is high time the city took up systemic reforms to nudge people to use water judiciously. While there will be enthusiasm during drought years, like during the summer earlier this year, we often drop the ball with just one good rain,” says lake conservation activist V. Ramprasad.

This summer, hardpressed for water, the BWSSB pushed for the mandatory use of treated wastewater for construction purposes. However, sources say the demand for treated water that had gone up during summer has dropped drastically and the initiative has been left on the backburner.

Activists have been pointing out that the water provided in the city is at a highly subsidised cost (₹7 per kilolitre for a domestic connection) and a tariff revision, not done for over a decade now, should ensure water is not wasted. Activists have suggested dual pricing models to keep water affordable to poorer sections of society.

Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar recently announced that the water tariff in the city  will be revised soon.

Another concern has been water wastage during supply, pegged at 29% in 2023. Reducing this will also reduce the quantum of water drawn from the Cauvery, experts argue.

While successive State governments have provided lip service to such sustainable initiatives to harness water resources in Bengaluru, their plans for the burgeoning city, which is expected to cross a population of two crore by 2031, have always involved bringing water from reservoirs afar. The proposal to bring water from the Linganamakki reservoir, built across the Sharavati, over 400 km away from Bengaluru, has been put on the backburner for now.

Published - October 25, 2024 07:04 am IST