The Hindu Business Line : Scheme to augment drinking water supply in Bangalore city

THE integrated water supply scheme, announced by the Union Finance Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, in the Interim Budget, for Bangalore and the four metros will mean some 30 per cent augmentation of drinking water at an estimated cost of Rs 10 crore for the city.

The Bangalore water utility will rejuvenate five heavily silted water bodies around the city and ready them to catch rainwater.

The quantum is to be fixed. The tanks would captively serve their neighbouring areas alongside the existing Cauvery supply, the Bangalore Water Supply & Sewerage Board (BWSSB) Chairman, Mr M.N. Vidyashankar, said. "The Hulimavu, Doddabanavara and three smaller tanks around the city have been disused and dead. They can be converted into permanent and perennial assets if we can improve them," he told Business Line.

Mr Jaswant Singh wants the scheme to start immediately and the board has started to update its three-year-old survey of the consumption pattern of the population around these water bodies.

"The scheme was proposed to the Urban Development Department three years ago and it now needs the formal word as we are ready with the design, equipment and everything else," Mr Vidyashankar said.

BWSSB is also going ahead this year with its major capacity building plan, the JBIC-funded phase 2 of the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme-IV.

The Rs 3,675-crore scheme is being put up to add 500 mld (million litres a day) of water to the city. According to the water board chief, "Water from the integrated scheme will only be a small drop in the ocean."

It, however, will be a serious attempt at rainwater harvesting, which is also being enforced by new building policies of other civic authorities like the Bangalore Development Authority and the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike.