BENGALURU: The ground level reservoirs of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board are spilling about 35 million litres of water per day (MLD) due to leaks in these old structures.
The 56 reservoirs spread across the City play a crucial role in water distribution across the City as water pumped from Cauvery flows directly into them and is stored there before distribution. Nearly 1,450 million litres per day (MLD) of water is supplied to the City daily, of which 700 MLD is stored in reservoirs.
Barring the reservoirs recently constructed in connection with Cauvery Water Supply IV State, the rest are between 35 and 70 years old, S Kemparamaiah, Engineer-in-Chief (EIC), BWSSB, told Express. “As a consequence, some of the structures have developed big cracks and 5 per cent of water supplied to the City daily gets leaked. This amounts to between 30 and 35 MLD,” he said.
Top officials checked on major reservoirs during the last fortnight by conducting tests. “All the four were found to be leaking,” said H M Ravindra, Chief Engineer.
The reservoirs at Kethama-ranahalli, CJF at Malleswaram, High Grounds and Bull Temple Road suffer leakages. This is definitely a significant amount as the entire Unaccounted For Water (UFW) Project in South Bengaluru, which took three years to implement, has resulted in a savings of 35 MLD, Ravindra conceded.
“The BWSSB is keen on repairing them but stopping supply to reservoirs to carry out repair works could affect power supply across the City considerably,” Kemparamaiah said. The reservoirs need to be closed from 2 to 15 days for the repairs to be completed. The quantum of water stored in the reservoirs ranges between 14 MLD and 60 MLD, depending on the reservoir’s dimensions. To carry out repair work, the water needs to be supplied directly to houses bypassing the reservoirs, Kemparamaiah added.
The High Grounds BWSSB office has four 14 MLD reservoirs, one 36 MLD reservoir and a mammoth 60 MLD reservoir. “All of them suffer leakages. We have now set right 3 of the 14 MLD reservoirs and are working on setting right the remaining too,” he said.