Nagpur: Mayor Nanda Jichkar has finally convened a special general body meeting on November 30 to discuss the grim water situation in the city.
On October 20, corporators had demanded a discussion on NMC’s preparedness on water scarcity for the upcoming summer , following scanty rainfall this season.
Ruling party leader Sandip Joshi then assured the elected representatives of convening a special general body meeting on November 3 to discuss the issue.
“During the October 20 general body meeting, BJP corporator Deepak Chaudhary had suggested to do a havan for water scarcity in the city,” Ghodeswar he said, adding, “But the ruling party is not serious about the issue.” Ghodeswar said nothing happened even after raising the water crisis issue before the House.
“A special meeting of general body for entire day should be convened to discuss the issue to prevent any crisis during summers.
Recently, senior independent corporator Abha Pande too submitted a letter to Jichkar demanding a special general body meeting over the issue.
Accepting water crisis to some extent, Zalke said, “We are already working and ensuring that citizens do not suffer water scarcity.” The mayor has convened the November 30 House to discuss proposals submitted by the town planning department of widening Kamptee and Wardha roads for Nagpur Metro Rail Project.
Against the demand of 680 MLD water per day, the city is pumping and supplying 60 MLD less.
However, the demand for the city is around 680 MLD, said a senior official.
“This summer, NMC had withdrawn 710 MLD water during summer season,” he added.

Even at a time when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) imposed 10 per cent water cut across the city, the civic body has failed to check Non-Revenue Water (NRW) which accounts to 27 per cent of total water supply.
10 years later, the civic body is still fighting the NRW while the percentage of loss jumped by 7 per cent.
Apart from waste through leakages, unauthorised connections and error in metering account for water wasted.
They don’t have workers in their leakage detection squad.
If leakages are detected and repaired in time, the issue of water scarcity can be addressed," said Rais Sheikh, group leader of Samajwadi Party.
"The BMC has detailed GPS mapping in Mulund and Bandra west which can help detect leakages.
Their aim was to map all pipelines in the city, but after 10 years they did it only for two wards."
"Shortage of manpower is the biggest challenge we are facing while dealing with the issue.
It’s difficult to attend the leakages if the road is made of concrete.
half the time the RTO doesn’t give permission due to heavy traffic," said the BMC officer.

The Irrigation Department has closed the canal till December 7, due to which the Water Supply Department has cut the daily supply to the city by 50 per cent.
As much as 10.5 million gallons of water is supplied to the city every day.
However, these days, only 5.5-6 million gallons water is being supplied.
With a majority of areas getting rationed supply, people are being forced to get up early to collect water that trickles down from the taps.
Owing to the low supply, the pressure on the underground water is also increasing.
The situation would worsen in the coming days when the amount of stored water being supplied to the residents these days would decrease.
VB Shivangi, DGM of Triveni Company, said “Water supply has been cut due to Sirhind Canal closure and at present, we are supplying 5.5 to 6 million gallons water in the city”.
It is pertinent to mention that councillors of various areas have been flooded with complaints of poor water supply.
The inadequate supply has forced residents to rely on underground water as many residents in these areas have installed motors to pump out underground water, which is unfit for consumption.
Notably, the district is well-known for its contaminated underground water.

In 2014, the capital began heavily relying on the South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), a massive infrastructure project that shuttles water from the south of China to its arid northern region.
Before China began building the world’s largest water transfer project, the Beijing government recognized that depleting regional reservoirs was not a viable long-term strategy.
Thus the city government turned to water recycling, which is a practice of reusing treated wastewater.
Yet the city has only five municipal-run centralized reuse treatment plants.
Currently, Beijing’s industrial sector uses 20 percent of Beijing’s reclaimed water.
Less than 50 percent of decentralized water recycling systems in Beijing are used.
Huo Chang’s CECEP colleague Jun Du explains: “My home has the zhōng shuǐ tap used for toilet flushing.
Huo Chang’s company estimates that currently only 10 percent of residential and commercial customers in Beijing have access to centralized reuse water, despite a majority of Beijingers’ stronger confidence in it.
Policymakers need to shift their focus to creating sustainable and more centralized water reuse systems that are well monitored.
For a more in-depth analysis of Beijing’s water recycling policies and their implementation gaps, see Danielle Neighbour’s forthcoming publication in the Chinese Journal of Population Resources and Environment.

Cape Town is one of 12 global cities facing water scarcity and, according to experts, if drastic measures are not taken, future generations will suffer.
Pablo Garcia-Chevesich, a professor in the department of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, in the US, said this week, residents of affected cities could benefit from adapting to the reality of water scarcity.
Cities facing similar challenges are Istanbul, Moscow, London, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo , Jakarta, Mexico City,Tokyo and Miami in the US.
Garcia-Chevesich was speaking at the announcement of the W12 Future of Water conference planned to take place in Stellenbosch in May.
He urged citizens and governments of affected countries to learn from other parts of the world which have had to adapt in order to survive.
He said people in areas where water had always been scarce like in Arizona which is a semi-desert, learnt early on to treat water as a precious resource.
Garcia-Chevesich made an example of how people talk about adapting but grow lawns that require water to stay green or use water hoses to remove leaves from their driveways, as a sign that adapting to the reality of climate change was slow.
The professor, who is also directing a Unesco Netflix documentary titled Waterwise, how to drain a country, said because of land-use changes, consumption increases and how people change, the availability of water was also changing.
The conference organiser, Save our Schools, (SOS NPO) executive director, Shelley Humphreys said the conference next year will have former governor of California and Terminator actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the keynote speakers.
“The aim of W12 is to create the first ‘Major City Best Practice Water Protocol’ and to raise awareness about the impact of climate change and the role of cities and citizens in finding solutions for resilience in a water-scarce world,” said Humphreys.

NCP president Sharad Pawar has written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, asking him to undertake concrete action in view of "drought" situation in the state and pay "personal attention" to tackle the problem.
Pawar noted there was a shortage of water and that livestock is under threat due to lack of fodder.
"The state government needs to undertake concrete action programme keeping the seriousness of the drought in mind…you please pay personal attention into it," Pawar has said in the letter written to the CM Friday.
Along with the letter, Pawar has also suggested the chief minister ways to tackle the current situation.
The former Union agriculture minister observed that Maharashtra is faced with water shortage due to subnormal rainfall.
He said kharif (summer) crops stand damaged, while cultivation of rabi (winter) crops is in trouble due to scanty rainfall.
"I hope timely action will be taken to tackle the drought situation and hope people of the state will get relief," Pawar added.
A large part of Maharashtra is reeling under severe water scarcity due to deficient monsoon this year.
Last month, Fadnavis had said around 180 talukas in Maharashtra were facing a "drought-like" situation.
(With inputs from agencies.)

For the first time in 34 years, the Kabini reservoir has fetched 176.28 tmc ft of water for Tamil Nadu | EPS MYSURU: For the first time in 34 years, the Kabini reservoir has fetched 176.28 tmc ft of water for Tamil Nadu.
Karnataka has so far released 330 tmc ft to the neighbouring state, including 176 tmc ft from Kabini and 163 tmc ft from the Krishnaraja Sagar reservoir, marking an increase of about three times the quantity given over the last few years.
Last year, the state released less than 140 tmc ft to Tamil Nadu from both the reservoirs combined.
The discharge used to be over 200 tmc ft in the early 1980s from Kabini, according to sources.
On the other hand, the discharge from KRS during this year was 1.31 lakh cusecs for more than a week due to heavy downpour in Kodagu district.
Tamil Nadu, which is entitled to 404.25 tmc of Cauvery water, including the underground water table, has so far received 330 tmc of water from Karnataka.
No water scarcity There will no water scarcity in Bengaluru, Mysuru and other towns, sources in the irrigation department said.
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Though it was found out that most of them already use water judiciously, the water expert gave them advice on how to cut down usage further.
Water Expert Madhukar Kambale demonstrates to Manali Kamat how to wipe off excess oil from utensils to save water Ramachandra and Manali Kamat stay on the 3rd floor of Nirmal Building.
Water expert Madhukar Kambale told them they need only three litre water.
He suggested them to cut water supply from he flush by pushing the nob upwards in the middle.
Though they need three and a half buckets of water to wash clothes daily, Kambale told them about the secret of using washing powder judiciously.
Kambale giving instruction to Gouri Kalokhe on how to reduce usage of water in a washing machine There are five members in the Kalokhe family.
They have one vehicle and it takes about one bucket of water to wash it and they use tap water for plants.
They have promised to cut down usage on these as well.
They believe 10-litre water in the flush tank is a necessity and don’t want to cut down usage there.
The maid uses running tap water to wash utensils and water expert Madhukar Kambale believes this can be changed to bring down water wastage.

The goal is simple: reservoirs store water in times of abundance of water and stabilize its level in the dry season.
An international team of scientists working on drought, reports that many dams and reservoirs can, paradoxically, contribute to the lack of water, they, on the contrary, is intended to solve.
A study published in Nature Sustainability.
A group of scientists under the supervision of Professor Giuliano Di Baldassarre (Giuliano Di Baldassarre) from Uppsala University (Sweden) in their work showed that the increase in storage capacity in the long term may lead to unintended effects and, paradoxically, increase water shortages.
The authors argue that the expansion or planning of reservoirs should take into account two contradictory phenomena: the cycle of supply and demand and reservoir effect.
The cycle of supply and demand describes the cases when an increase in supply leads to an increase in water demand that can quickly offset the initial benefit from the creation of reservoirs.
Moreover, prolonged periods of abundant water supported reservoirs can lead to greater dependence on water resources, which in turn increases the social vulnerability and economic damage as a result of a deficit will occur.
A new study has political implications.
Instead, they offer less reliance on large water infrastructure such as dams and reservoirs, and to work towards preserving water resources.
In other words, the scientists propose to deal with drought and water shortages by reducing water consumption, not increase supply.

Instead of implementing long-term solutions for uninterrupted water availability, the BMC is looking at instant solutions to the water crisis, corporators and activists said.
Many parts of the city are already facing water scarcity and this will become worse in the coming months due to water cut and low pressure of water.
The city gets 3,800 million litre of water per day.
The water supply is low-pressured in several areas due to leakages and the BMC doesn’t have a proper system in place to detect them," said Rais Sheikh, group leader of Samajwadi Party.
Though The BMC imposed water cuts across the city, few areas will be more affected than the others due to various factors, fear the corporators.
Colaba, Bandra, Jogeshwari, and Charkop faced uneven water supply for several days last month; corporators blamed the civic body for cutting supply on the sly.
Twenty five per cent water is lost during supply every day, due to leakages in pipeline, theft in the slums and illegal tapping.
The pipelines laid about 50 to 60 years ago have rusted and need immediate repair.
The city has seven sewerage treatment plants, where the water gets only preliminary treatment before being disposed into the sea.
The project to upgrade them for tertiary treatment so that water can be used for gardening and industries has been delayed for almost 10 years now.