There have been a flurry of alarmists posts like these but somehow I cant wrap my head around how will we run out of water. I stay in Bangalore and some people do have the problem of water - but for the most part it doesnt seem to be an issue of 'lack' of water perse but mostly distribution issues. Bangalore has been having intermittent rains throughout the summers and even though few people use them now, but if situ…
1. Musi river water/Manjeera 2. the Large lakes like Hussain/Osmania Sagar etc. 3. ground water/borewells
My apartment society in Gachibowli area, just ran of water for a few days back in June. The borewell just couldnt get the water. There is no lake around us.
Getting the river water connection would be around Rs.15_00_0000. To add to the issues, the gov is not giving out new river water connections without a longdrawn process and the river water itself is too low to sustain all the existing connection.
Right now several apartment societies with 3000+ apartments in them are coming up in my immediate neighbourhood. So next year, we can expect the borewell water to be over way before june (early may?). We will certainly don't have river water connection by then. So, we will be dependent on water takers for a few months. this year the tankers are charging 8k (from 2k last year) for each refill. next year, the price would be over 20k for each refill.
Rain water harvesting doesnt works greatly in areas like ours which only get a few months of rain. Where will you keep the harvested water for the next 8-9 months? How do you maintain the quality of this stagnant water? So, most likely people would end up using it and the hope would be that an equivalent amount of ground water will be spared. It really doesnt works out in practice. People don't ration the water usage and will not until it gets dire. Also rain harvesting infra will take years to set up. Desalinating water is not much help as transporting the water is a logistical issue. So yes, while there are possible solutions, they will take a lot of political will to execute and will certainly take more than a few years to bear fruit. The situation, till then will be bad.
The water in all lakes is incredibly low. The lakes are also extremely dirty (http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/2018/oct/07...) The water is already contaminated by industrial waste.
2020 is going to be bad for us in Hyderabad. Not Chennai level bad. but we will get there in the next few years. And what i do know of Bangalore form my other friends who live there, its pretty bad there already. A lot of large societies are dependent on tanker waters despite Bangalore having much more rainfall than Hyderabad.
All in all, I think this level of alarm is not just necessary, it should have come a decade ago, when it would have been easier to circumvent. Hyderabad's population will cross 12MM by 2030. Now, whatever approach we end up taking, its gonna be costly, hard to execute and will take a lot of time. And will probably will not be enough.
EDIT: I am wildly off on the Hyderabad population growth. The existing census data is from 2011. Apparently we crossed 12MM in 2019. https://indiapopulation2019.com/population-of-hyderabad-2019... If correct, this is over the population of major mega cities like NY, LA etc.