BENGALURU: Soon, residents will have to save water in their homes by creating sufficient storage spaces of 60 litres per square metre, on their properties, chief secretary TM Vijay Bhaskar said on Monday.
He was speaking at the day-long conclave ‘Bengaluru City Water Conclave’, organised by the Centre for Contemporary Issues, to find ways and means to avoid the city going the Cape Town way.
Bhaskar said the government will make these storage spaces mandatory for all new and old residential units that are built on sites measuring 60x40 sqft and more. He said the city can no longer be dependent on Cauvery water alone and must take up this initiative.
Explaining the concept, he said if the roof area is 100 sqm, the owner has to create a 6,000-litre capacity tank. Earlier, the rule was 20 litres per square metre.
Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) engineer-in-chief Kemparamaiah said the proposal was sent to the government a month and a half ago. It will come into effect from the coming month. Once approved, people will have to start implementing it immediately.
It’s been proposed to increase the storage capacity of underground water tanks from 10 litres to 20 litres per square metre and overhead tanks from 20 litres to 60 litres per square metre. It has also been proposed that the penalty for not implementing rainwater harvesting be increased from 50 per cent of the water bill to 100 per cent for domestic users, and from 100 per cent to 200 per cent for non-domestic users. Oriental Consultants, Tata, NSS and Black Witch have been appointed consultants for this project.
MK Shankarlinge Gowda, former Bangalore Development Authority Commissioner, said dual water pipeline system was proposed in the 2005 Master Plan, but till date, little has been done. Bengaluru gets 31 tmcft water only for drinking, which is equal to the Hemavathi or Malaprabha project. He suggested that instead of bringing Bengalureans from Kanakapura, Ramanagara, Magadi and Tumkuru, it was better to declare these districts as Bengaluru Metropolitan Regions.