When every drop of water has become precious in the wake of severe drought in the State, nearly 360 million litres of water go waste in terms of leakage due to old and worn- out pipelines in the city.
BWSSB pumps 900 million litres of water per day (MLD) from the river Cauvery as against a demand of 1,125 MLD. It is estimated that nearly 40 per cent of this goes down the drain due to leakage and other reasons, an assistant executive engineer of BWSSB said.
Express contacted some Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs) to know whether they had implemented any water conservation plans other than rain water harvesting.
Gunda Bhat, Joint Secretary of J P Nagar Dollars Colony Residents’ Association said, “I have stopped washing my car and just wipe it with a wet cloth. Our association has decided to suggest others to do the same thing to save water”.
N Mukund, a member of Jayanagar 5th Block Residents Welfare Association, said, “We have adopted water conservative taps (aerated). We have advised other members to water lawns, wash cars once in a week.”
When compared to normal taps, aerated taps save nearly 35-40 per cent of water per minute. While the normal tap allow 12 litres of water to come out per minute, these water conservative taps allow only 9 litres. He also demanded the BWSSB to be proactive like BESCOM and the traffic police who are into social networking. “Dual piping facility of supplying Tertiary Treated Water for purposes like construction should be promoted. More proactive steps are needed from the board,” he added.
B N R Reddy, Chairman of Federation of H S R Layout Residents Welfare Association, said, “The number of people washing cars daily has come down. When it comes to bathing, we use water from buckets rather than showers.”
“We are ready to buy Tertiary Treated Water from the BWSSB for non-potable needs,” he added.
“We are supplying 8,000 to 30,000 litres of water per connection. The water given to the consumers is minimum and we have requested them to use the water judiciously,” said BWSSB Engineer-in-chief T Venkatraju.
When asked on whether the board had suggested any water conservation plans other than RWH, Venkatraju said they will explore possibilities of such things after commissioning the Cauvery 4th Stage, 2nd Phase works.
However, the officials said it is not possible to measure the quantity of water which is being used to wash cars or water plants as it depends on individuals.
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