Nearly 30 per cent of the water produced by the water treatment plants of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) goes to waste, yet the civic body has to bore deep tube wells to meet the demand.
The two realities - surplus water going to waste in some places and others reeling from a severe crisis — co-exist in Kolkata.
KMC engineers have for long been saying that the volume of potable water produced by the civic body – about 480 million gallons a day – was more than enough to meet the demand of the entire city.
Yet, several pockets, especially in Kasba, Jadavpur, Mukundapur, Anandapur and Tollygunge, still suffer from water crisis because of improper rationing and wastage.
“There are places in Cossipore where some households were found to be receiving more than five times the water they should be consuming. This was found out after water meters were installed as part of a project to assess consumption. The meters were not installed to impose water tax,” said an official of the KMC, which goes to the polls on Sunday.
The national daily water consumption standard in India, set by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation, is 135 litres per person per day.
The KMC official said on an average, the default allotment for an individual in water-surplus zones in north and central Kolkata is 180 litres.
“It cannot be that the entire volume is consumed by the individual. 135 litres are enough to meet all demands of a person. The additional water goes to waste,” said the official.
The late Trinamul leader Subrata Mukherjee had proposed water tax when he was Kolkata’s mayor between 2000 and 2005. But his party chief Mamata Banerjee did not allow that.
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya of the CPM, who was mayor from 2005 to 2010, did not go ahead with the proposal either.
KMC engineers said that since the civic boards were not in favour of imposing water tax, some of them had proposed to penalise those who wasted water and give cash or other incentives to those who saved water.
“We can give 135 litres of water for free and charge for additional usage. This will help reduce wastage,” said an engineer. But for that to happen, water meters have to be installed in all households and commercial establishments.
While a huge volume of water is wasted every day, the KMC has to dig deep tube wells in parts of the city. There are about 350 deep tube wells in the city now.
An official of the KMC’s water supply department said there were 800 deep tube wells in the city a few years ago. The civic body had brought down the number by expanding the potable water supply network.
But as the population soared and multiple apartments came up, especially along EM Bypass, more tube wells are being dug.
Outgoing mayor Firhad Hakim had said in June 2019 that there were 132 deep tube wells in Borough X in south Kolkata.
“If the withdrawal of water is more than the natural recharging, the underground water reserve will get depleted. The reserve was built over hundreds of years but the rate at which water is being extracted is a matter of concern,” said Asis Majumdar, a professor of water resources engineering at Jadavpur University.