Two-thirds of city out of basin limits: tribunal

Two-thirds of city out of basin limits: tribunal
The Times of India

Bangalore: Even as Karnataka had sought 30 tmcft of water for Bangalore, the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal in its final award has allocated only 8.75 tmcft.
Devoting eight pages of the 1,000-page verdict on water for Bangalore, the Tribunal said: “Assuming that 50 per cent of the drinking water requirement will be met from ground water and the remaining 50 per cent from surface (river) water to be made available from Cauvery including transit losses would be 8.75 tmcft.’’
However, legal experts claim that the Tribunal has gone by conservative estimates of water requirement for Bangalore. Of the 270 tmcft entitlement for Karnataka, the state government has the flexibility to enhance the allocation for Bangalore as drinking water is of prime importance, they added.
What the Cauvery
Tribunal observed
The Tribunal observed that Bangalore, is located in the Cauvery basin border. The information furnished by Karnataka indicates that 64 per cent of Bangalore city areas lies outside the basin and only 36 per cent within. However, Tamil Nadu has disputed and stated only 30 per cent of Bangalore lies in the basin and 70 per cent outside.
“Since very accurate determination of the city area is difficult, it has been considered that Bangalore area falls — one-third in the basin and two-thirds outside — which was repeatedly mentioned during the arguments,’’ the Tribunal said.
It further observed, Karnataka state has indicated that existing and ongoing drinking schemes in Bangalore were for 6.52 tmcft and 8 tmcft respectively totalling to 14.52 tmcft. “This position was indicated to the Tribunal during June 1990. However, the state has demanded ultimate drinking water requirement for Bangalore to be of the order of 30 tmcft. We are considering the existing requirements as indicated in 1990 which is 14.52 tmcft,’’ the order said.
How city’s needs were planned
Since two-third of Bangalore city lies outside the basin, we are considering the drinking water requirement for that area which lies only within the basin along with the remaining basin area and the drinking water requirement for urban and rural population worked out for 2011 projection. The 2011 projection was worked out adopting the percentage decennial growth for the year 1981-91 census district-wise and the area of each district falling within the Cauvery basin as furnished by Karnataka. For Bangalore city area within the basin, population projection is based on census report of 2001 furnished by Tamil Nadu.
Allocation of water
25 per cent of population in the urban areas has been allowed water requirement at 135 litres per capita per day (lpcpd) 75 per cent of urban population allowed 100 lpcpd. This has been done keeping in view different categories of cities and towns falling in the Cauvery basin.
Regarding Bangalore city falling within the basin, water at 150 lpcd has been provided. For urban population it works out to 8.70 tmcft.
For rural population, water requirement at 70 lpcpd has been adopted which is 8.52 tmcft.
Therefore the total water requirement for urban and rural population comes to 17.22 tmcft. Since only 50 per cent of the water requirement is drawn from the river, the allocation is 8.75 tmcft
Population projection
The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal said the riparian states were asked to project their population for the years 2000 and 2025 for calculating the drinking water requirement. “Although the assessors (experts committee) suggested that the requirements should be taken for the year 2051, for the present case the assessment made for 2011 should suffice,’’ it added.
The Tribunal also said that when water is initially lifted from the source of supply such as rivers, lakes wells, the entire water lifted is not fully consumed when used for domestic purpose.
Of 100 units of water initially lifted for domestic use, only 20 units are consumed and the remaining 80 units come back as return flow in the river basin. Hence for domestic purpose 20 per cent of the quantity of water diverted or lifted from the river or reservoir or canal will be considered.