BWSSB’s drive to save water to cover entire Bangalore

BWSSB’s drive to save water to cover entire Bangalore
Vijay Times

THOSE having unauthorised water connection or a defective water meter, beware! The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is carrying out an intensive drive to nail down such connections.

Based on the results from Unaccounted For Water (UFW) project, a pilot project to reduce water leakage under Cauvery IV stage, Phase I covering 32,000 connections, BWSSB has proposed to globalise the distribution improvement scheme in the entire City (under BMP limits).

THREE LAKH CONNECTIONS

The proposed scheme, estimated at a cost of around Rs 300 crore, will include the distribution water improvement component under Cauvery IV stage, Phase II in an area of about 300 sq km with about 3,00,000 connections.

BWSSB officials claim to reduce the current UFW rate from around 30 per cent to 15 per cent by 2011 under the project.

The commencement of the distribution component under Phase II will be based on the key learnings which revealed unknown leakages, lines and links, corroded house service connections, defective meters and encrusted pipelines.

Explaining the benefits of the project, BWSSB sources said, "With the extension of UFW in the entire City, we can check on the reliability in water supply, increase in system pressure, improvement in water quality and control over distribution loss." At present, we are at the stage of finalising the consultants. Once this is done, we will commence the work by mid 2007, which is likely to complete by 2011, informed sources.

CONTINUOUS PROCESS

"The UFW concept is followed no where in the country expect in Bangalore City. It is a wrong notion to think that water related problems will be immediately solved with the implementation of the project. It is a continuous process which requires life-long maintenance," sources added.

With the automatic and electronic system, we aim at reducing the UFW rate from 35 per cent to 15 per cent and this is expected as we have cent per cent metering in the City. The works will commence with the submission of a detailed report prepared by selected consultants, they said.

Only after submission of a report, we will identify the District Meter Area (DMA), and in every DMA we will install bulk meters and electronic loggers, which will record the flow of water every day.

Instruments such as pressure gauges, electronic magnetic flow meters, pressure loggers and sounding rods will check on the internal leakages in the water pipelines and help control the entire distribution of water network.

BWSSB’s drive to save water to cover entire Bangalore