Bengaluru: Sustainability of groundwater sources needs to be at the centre of Bengaluru’s development blueprint as the city grapples with the inevitability of unchecked growth and failed monsoons set off by climate change, water resource expert Dipankar Saha said.
The former member-secretary of the Central Ground Water Authority underscored water use efficiency as critical to the sustainable management of urban sprawls. Saha is currently a board member of the India division of Water For People, a US-headquartered non-profit that works on clean water solutions.
Bengaluru’s ongoing water crisis is not a lot unlike the one faced by surface water-dependent cities like Mumbai or groundwater-dependent cities like Patna.
“The issue in Bengaluru is that the high rate of urbanisation – both vertically and through the annexing of peri-urban areas – leaves traditional water supply networks and surface water sources short. The pressure is immense on groundwater sources and management of these sources is inadequate,” Saha told DH.
Calling source sustainability “a major challenge”, he said climate change was aggravating the crisis as the rainfall patterns become increasingly unpredictable. “Since the groundwater extraction is too high, cities are becoming more and more dependent on rainfall. This is happening across urban India but the trend has spiked in Bengaluru,” he said.
Saha has led the National Aquifer Mapping and Management Programme as National Coordinator.
Improving water use efficiency is one of the strategies adopted in the Atal Bhujal Yojana (Atal Jal), the union government’s community-led groundwater management project. Atal Jal which covers water-stressed areas in Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh supports volumetric metering and real-time data systems and increasing awareness of groundwater governance.
“Supply-side interventions like rainwater harvesting and artificial recharging can have a limited impact in areas with acute overexploitation (of groundwater). There is a new emphasis on demand-side interventions, specifically on enhancing water use efficiency. A lot of work is being done in this connection in the irrigation sector which consumes about 90% of the groundwater but water use efficiency in the urban areas is less discussed,” Saha said.
Pitching a decentralised, community-led approach to groundwater management, Saha said civic agencies also needed to work with domain experts to devise science-backed strategies that factor in contingencies like climate change. While treated greywater has immense potential to meet non-potable demands, its mainstreaming will need to involve stringent quality checks, he said.