Saving every drop: Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board plugs wastage
Bengaluru: The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has every reason to be pleased. Its ambitious Unaccounted for Water (UFW) project, which was undertaken with gusto by Larsen and Toubro, a private contractor, has not only helped the civic body save millions of liters of water, it has also increased its revenue by crores of rupees as the unaccounted water loss has reduced from an average of 50% to less than 20% over the last four years in south Bengaluru.
“We had started this project in June 2012. At that time, there were only six divisional jurisdictions in BWSSB, but as the city developed, they became nine and hence this project covered the full south division and a little of the south east division called the ‘Old South’ division,” said Kemparamaiah, Chief Engineer, BWSSB.
“In the old south division alone, the engineers formed 83 District Meter Areas (DMAs) in the five constituencies with each DMA group consisting of minimum 500-600 water connections to maximum 2500 to 3000 water connections. This gives an idea of the unaccounted water, which is one loop that depends on the inlets and outlets,” said Kemparamaiah. First, they identified the base level UFW by conducting a survey door-to-door and then checked on the condition of the pipelines.
Leakages were checked and the pipelines that were 30 years old and older were replaced -- whatever the replacement was required up to 300 millimeter diameter pipes were re-laid, almost all of them being distribution pipes with meager quantity of 600 and 450 mm diameter pipes that were also replaced,” added
Kemparamaiah. L&T had taken up the work at a cost of Rs 153 crore, and had to go through more than 150 kilometres of pipelines in the division, replacing and re-laying them wherever it was necessary.
The company was also tracking the water flow to 1,40,000 connections in Banagiri and Devagiri temple area, Katriguppe, Girinagar, Banashankari, Hoskerehalli, Kumaraswamy Layout, BTM Layout, Vijaya Bank Layout, Chamarajpet, Nagendra Block, J P Nagar and surrounding areas in the South and South East city.
“Among the 83 DMAs, at least 80% of them have recorded less than 20% of UFW,” said Kemparamaiah, adding that there is still final patchwork going on, which will continue for the next three months, after which the average of UFW could be 16% totally.
“The work of plugging of leakage of water from the pipelines in South Bengaluru concluded in June 30 this year after the contract company sought for one year’s extension in June 2015 due to constraints in acquiring ROW (Right Of Way), permissions to dig the roads and others,” the Chief Engineer said. He adds, “L&T will be only working on maintenance of BWSSB pipelines in the south division for the next three years.”
