Urban Water Supply

Govt set to plug overflowing taps
- Awareness drive to pay fine and legalise water connections
SUBHASHISH MOHANTY
When several districts in the state is facing drought-like situation, citizens in Bhubaneswar show no concern to save water. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 22: Believe it or not. Nearly 100 million litre of water gets wasted in the city everyday.

Bhubaneswar is one of the few cities in the country where the water supply capacity is almost double its requirement.

Though the city’s requires 160 million litres of water daily, the public health engineering department has the capacity to supply 260 million litres of water everyday.

“Nearly 100 million litres of water gets wasted everyday because of lack of awareness among the people on the use of water,” said M.R. Nanda, executive engineer of Bhubaneswar city. Officials said it could be stopped if the state government plans to introduce water metre.

The officials said that though the government had mooted the idea to introduce water metre, it has so far refrained from implementing the scheme fearing public backlash.

At present, Bhubaneswar gets water from Mahanadi, Daya and Kuakhai rivers. While 125 million litres of water is being taken everyday from Kuakhai, 20 million litres is drawn from Daya and 60 million litres from Mahanadi. The rest is sourced from underground water sources and small streams.

In a bid to crack down on illegal water connections, the public health engineering department has regularised 819 unauthorised connections during the last seven days in the city.

“We have collected Rs 15 lakh by converting unauthorised connections into regular ones. The money has been collected under the amnesty scheme that ended on Friday. Though the amnesty scheme has ended, there are several other schemes that the people can avail and take benefit from,” said Nanda.

He further added that all attempts had been made to regularise illegal water connections. Though it is very difficult to ascertain the exact number of illegal connections, Bhubaneswar has 61,000 regular connection points. Over the last two years, the number of regular water connections has jumped from 54,000 to 61,000.

One connection point can provide water to more than 400 households. “The entire campus of Utkal University is considered a single connection,” he said.

To reach out to the masses and create awareness among the people, the public health engineering department has started a water connection mela.

“We visit a particular area on public holidays so that people can take benefit of our awareness campaigns. At these camps, local residents can regularise their unauthorised connections by paying a fine of Rs 500,” he added.

Earlier, one had to wait for nearly 20-30 days to get a new connection. Now one can get a connection by paying Rs 3,060 even in instalments to get an authorised connection. “The monthly average collection of the waste cess is around Rs 1.20 core,” Nanda added.