BENGALURU: BWSSB chairman Tushar Girinath on Thursday said to prevent the public from wasting water, the installation of automatic water-level controllers in sumps at homes will soon be made mandatory.
Girinath was speaking at a panel discussion on ‘Sustainable, Equitable, Access to Water’, at the Bangalore International Centre on Thursday evening, held jointly by Citizen Matters, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and BIC. Providing details, V Gangadhar, chief engineer, Projects, BWSSB, told The New Indian Express that regulation 43 (B) has been incorporated in the BWSSB Act to facilitate this and the proposal has been submitted to the government for approval. “When pumping water from sumps to overhead tanks, many forget to switch off when the tank gets full which causes water wastage. Around 50 per cent of the houses in the city have water controllers installed but the rest will be made to do so through this,” he said.
Girinath also said a unified authority with powers was required to control the exploitation of groundwater in the city. Stating that Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) efforts undertaken by over one lakh homes have not resulted in much water saving, he said that a specialist will be appointed to monitor them in future. “The specialist will make visits and assess if RWH structures are working. Penalties would be imposed if it is malfunctional,” he added.