What will work? Investments in future projects? Expensive fresh water? Recycling for industries? Legislations?
Future tense
THIS is not a load of what you think it is. By the year
2001, the volume of sewage generated by Delhi is likely
to top a mountainous 3,200 mId.
The only way to flush it or purify it is with more
water. And no one knows where that is going to come
from, apart from one of the priorities of the city's Eighth
Five Year Plan, which envisages making investments in
future projects. Whatever that may mean.
There has already been roundhouse criticism of the
official claim that dams like Tehri, Renuka and Kishau
(see box Thrice dammed) will ever be able to meet the
water requirements of the city. Even if they could,
Delhi's financial share in these dams - none of which
can be completed before 1998 in any case - will vacuum
out its resources.
An anticipated pockets-turned-out situation is why
chief minister Khurana now seems to be insisting that
the city be provided with water from the sluggish
Yamuna through a new accord: "This water," he says,
will be much cheaper than water from Tehri. "
But what no administrator is able to explain is: if the
supply does reach its projected volume, how is the city
going to meet its treatment, supply and disposal costs in
the future? Three voices:
"There are no soft options. It is clear that the era of
cheap water is over," says Ramaswamy Iyer, former
Union water resources secretary and an expert on water-
related issues. The engineer-in -chief of DWSSDU,
S Prakash, insists that cost recovery must play an
emphatic role in fixing water supply charges. Pricing as a
means of demand management is a must, says Paul
Appasamy of the Madras Institute of Development
Studies. In Delhi's case, it appears to be particularly
important because cheap water, more than anything else,
has prevented every major initiative in both disciplined
use of water and its recycling.
Delhi is a prime example of absurd hospitality. In
many water scarce cities in the developed world, water is
used as many as 25 times before it is finally disposed of
but recycling of water even for horticultural and industrial purposes is treated with a wrinkled nose here. Says
Arun Jain,
assistant chief engineer of Hotel Hyatt
Regency in Delhi, "How can you
use recycled water in a
premium hotel?
The guests will be put off" (see
box Luxurious guzzling ... ).
Even the 30 mid of
horticultural demand within
Delhi is supplied with fresh
Water brought all the way from the
Bhakra canal. Similarly, few
industries, if any,
recycle their water because "it
makes better business sense to
buy water from the municipal
agencies than to
invest in recycling
it," says Appasamy. He argues
that while
a remunerative
pricing of water
is important to
discipline consumption, the
denial of access to
fresh water is most
likely to
bring big consumers
like industries and
commercial establishments in line, "The
Madras experience shows that
the business
community will opt
for recycling if water is not available to it at all," he says.
Technological innovations
can help propel financial savings. Take flushing
cisterns:
while manufacturers
like Hindustan Sanitaryware
have developed cisterns that
use as little as
3.5 litres, they confess to facing problems in marketing
them because the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)
has not yet chalked out a system of standardisation of
flushes in the water-saving category. "Without BIS certification, nobody wants to install a new cistern, especially
if all the old ones carry the stamp," says a company official.
And these little flushes cost more for their size.
Manufacturers defend themselves saying that precision
technology and superior material cost that much more;
but not many consumers, nevertheless, want to pay more
money when they do not, under threat of law, have to.
As to augmenting water resources at economical
rates, the only foolproof plan that the government seems
to have is importing water over great, foolish distances.
Advocates of water conservation like Anupam Mishra of
the Gandhi Peace Foundation, however, pinpoint an area
of tremendous scope: the traditional water reservoirs of
Delhi a large number of which have either been
reclaimed or are severely degraded.
According to Mishra, during the early
decades of this century, Delhi had as
many as 360 ponds and water reservoirs
through which the city met most of its
water needs. Even today, he says, they
-can be tapped to reduce the extraction of
groundwater through tubewells.
In the final analysis, a gritty And
enforceable legislative framework for
conservation-oriented use of water is
missing. Even a tentative draft bill circulated over a year ago by the Union water resources ministry has failed to move the
city's administrators. There are no
restrictions on punching a hole in
ground and bleeding aquifers dry. Water-
scarce cities like Madras, meanwhile,
have banned the individual exploitation
of groundwater.
While justifiable fears lurk around
about the misuse, corruption and
inequities inherent in legislative measures, Appasamy admits that he would
endorse them for lack of a better option.
Within the government itself, surprisingly, takers for this
option are few and full of trepidation.
The final say is CGWB's S K Sharma. "How can you
stop people from getting water?" he asks. "People have to
be given water."
The questions are: how much? And at whose cost?
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