CAUVERY BHAVAN: A project to keep track of water supply and cut losses from leaks will soon extend to all core city areas.
The recommendation was made by officials of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JAICA), when they visited the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) recently.
Three core areas of the BBMP are now under the Unaccounted For Water (UFW) project. Funded by Japan, the project aims to reduce water loss in the city from 48 per cent to 16.
Areas in East, North and South-east parts of the erstwhile Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BMP) are also included in the project now.
It had earlier covered South, West and Central Bengaluru of the former BMP, which account for 140 sq km. The project to track down and check leaks cost `550 crore.
BWSSB Chairman T M Vijay Bhaskar said, “The water saved on completion of the project will be 260 million litres per day (MLD) and we could supply it to all the 110 outlying village areas that do not receive BWSSB water now.”
Mirza Anwar, Assistant Executive Engineer, UFW (Revenue Improvement) for South and West, told Express, “A proposal has already been sent to JAICA, incorporating these areas that cover 105 sq km, and their approval for funding is expected soon.” The new project is expected to cost `600 crore.
Larsen & Turbo has been awarded the contract for the UFW project in Bangalore South and West. Bangalore South has had the best success so far and the BWSSB has decided to provide 24x7 water supply to many areas here because of the water saved during the four-year project.
Dollars Colony in JP Nagar has been receiving non-stop water supply for over a year now.
The project began in July 2012 and will conclude in June 2016. An additional three years will be covered under the project for maintenance issues. Areas here include Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Chamarajpet, Padmanabha Nagar, BTM Layout, Banashankari 2nd and 3rd Stages and Basavanagudi.
"Till October 2015, the unaccounted for water in the area has been
brought down to 34 per cent from the 49 per cent which prevailed when the project started. It is getting reduced by three to four per cent every month and we are confident of bringing the loss down to 16 per cent by mid-2016," the AEE added.
On the progress not being as fast as anticipated, the BWSSB Chairman said, "We have written to L&T asking them to speed things up."
Meanwhile in Bangalore West, the water loss has been reduced to 36 per cent from 49 per cent.
Vijayanagar, RPC Layout, Ramamurthy Nagar, Sadashivanagar and Malleswaram are the areas covered. The deadline for this three-yearproject is November 2016 and an additional five years will be provided for maintenance.
Bengaluru Central, meanwhile, has been progressing rather slowly. It has been 24 months since the project began but there has been no real progress shown whatsoever in water reduction so far.
"Areas are being divided into smaller units (District Metering Areas) and laying of infrastructure is in progress. It will start very soon," said an official. French multinational firm Suez Environment and SPML Infra Limited arejointly carrying out the work here.