How to solve Bangalore’s water problems?
First of all, I am no water expert. I understand there are umpteen solutions put forward daily by more knowledgeable citizens. And many of them are being tried out in some way or the other by people or the Government.
There is a report somewhere which says 21 of Indian cities will dry up by 2020. Bangalore is in that list along with Chennai, Delhi and others. Though 2020 for some reason sounds like it is in the far future, it is almost tomorrow as we are right in the mid way in 2019.
As a person living here for a large part of my life, I know that we have covered a large part of the ground with concrete making the situation worse. To add to this, we have cut a humongous number of trees to make these concrete structures, which makes it even worse, for otherwise, the trees would have made provisions to carry the water underground.
Also by virtue of living here for a long time, I know that we have covered all our water bodies with real estate. And we regularly regularise these irregularities through special fee collection.
Given these set of damages, though they are reversible in long term by planting trees or cleaning up the water bodies, which anyways are happening in parts, are there other ways we can solve Bangalore’s water problem ? or for that matter, any of these 21 cities in India that will face this crisis.
I see that in most of the well developed localities of Bangalore, there is a Storm Water Channel that runs along the road side in front of all the houses. This channel was meant to divert the rain water into lakes nearby. And all lakes were inter connected, probably during the British period and may be there in few places now. Due to population pressure, rampant construction and corruption, many of these interconnections between the lakes have disappeared along with the lakes. However, the storm water drains are still there to a large part. Though they have been littered with garbage, sometimes with sewage in parts.
Now I will come to the solution part.
Imagine these Storm Water Drains (SWD) as a running pipeline across the length and breadth of the city. When the lakes were there, this pipeline drained the rain water into the lakes. Now that the lakes have disappeared and marginalised, these SWD might be just flooding the low lying residential areas where once lakes stood. So instead of using the SWD like a drain pipe, use it like a Store. Yes, all I am saying is, the SWD which covers 1000s of kilometers of surface area across the city can be seen as one giant water tank that can collect and hold rain water during rainy seasons and supply water to the houses that it runs along.
While re-laying the roads, we can ensure the rain water falling on the roads are properly going into these SWD pipes. We can even make it into a proper pipe instead of the concrete and stone slab structure it is today. All the rain from the houses which are let out into the roads can come into this pipe.
We can also ensure there is an outlet from this pipe into the houses to consume the rain water. This can be to the regular cauvery water connection and can be metered by the same meters. This brings the revenue to maintain these SWD pipes. This can be used to clean the pipes, repair them and for disinfecting the water and filtering it to maintain the pH and TDS levels before it is supplied to homes.
Also, wherever there are connections to lakes these SWDs can be used as drains to those lakes like before, recharging the water bodies and underground water. This can be used as a method to drain water if there is excess rainfall. But I believe, the consumption by the houses will alone be enough to drain this pipe.
Reusing the SWD like a gargantuan water tank and controlling the inflow and outflow of this pipe can allow us to harvest all the rain water that is falling in the city to be put to good use.
