Corporators want special GB meet to discuss water crisis.
Aurangabad: Annoyed over frequent disruptions in the city’s water supply system that has aggravated water scarcity, Gajanan Mangate leader of the house in Aurangabad Municipal Corporation on Thursday urged mayor Bapu Ghadamode to convene a special meeting of general body discuss the matter.
In a letter addressed to the mayor, Mangate said that the residents across the city are facing hardships due to water scarcity.
"In most of the localities people have not been receiving tap water as per schedule while in other localities the residents are getting it after a gap of five to six days.
Apart from this, water contamination is also a big cause of concern for the residents," he said.
Mangate said that the corporators cutting across the party lines have been demanding a special meeting to mount pressure on the municipal administration to streamline the system and minimise water scarcity in summer.
Besides Mangate, Sitaram Sure, Raosaheb Amle and Makarand Kulkarni have also demanded a special meeting.
The 35-year-old supply system has become quite unpredictable as the main pipelines has been developing faults at many places causing inconvenience to the residents.
The civic body has used the pipes way beyond its capacity as a result of which most of the joints and air valves have become very old leading to leakages.
The entire pipeline needs to be replaced to cater to the needs of the residents.

Many residents of newly-developed sectors have been left at the mercy of tankers mafia.
According to Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) minister, Islamabad on average needs 70 mgd (Million gallons per day) while a water shortage of 17 MGD is observed most of the time around the year.
The lag between supply and demand is filled mostly by the government and private water tankers.
Also out of around 200 tube wells located in different sectors of capital around one-third remain dysfunctional and await necessary repairs.
During the tenure of former CDA Chairman Kamran Lashari, more than a decade ago a mega project to bring water from Indus River via Tarbela Dam was approved that once completed would have sorted out water woes of twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
However, the project was shelved then and plans are afoot to revive it.
‘It has become an annual ritual that we perform every year during these months.
I’ve been living in G-13 for the last 6 years, we tried water boring but to no avail, the water level is very low.
It is pertinent to mention here that scarcity of water is nothing new for citizens of Islamabad as they have grown accustomed to it during recent years while civic authorities have utterly failed to address the issue.
Hussain said that water tankers of CDA are working 24/7 to supply water at highly subsidized costs to residents of Islamabad.

Water-related business risks are becoming more and more apparent.
That’s why CDP, the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and WWF are calling for a new approach to setting corporate water targets.
Local context matters—a lot.
As such, water targets at each company facility need not only account for company circumstance, but also for the larger watershed conditions and risks.
Aligning company performance with the local river basin context is increasingly considered a requirement for meaningful water targets.
Science, instead of individual interests, informs what needs to change and when.
That means corporate targets for water use must be based on science and understanding at the basin level, and not set arbitrarily.” Mars is using the latest science on the global carbon budget, water stress and other ecological limits to set meaningful sustainability targets for greenhouse gas emissions, water and land.
Governments and local basin initiatives are at the forefront of water management.
Because of this, companies have a lot to gain by aligning their water goals with local, national and global water priorities, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
The California Water Action Collaborative is a unique platform that links companies to state water goals.

China has 20 percent of the world’s population but less than 6 percent of the groundwater.
Desalination could be another solution.
The resultant dependence on and over-extraction of groundwater are having severe impacts on Beijing, including subsidence.
Long Di, a researcher at Tsinghua University’s Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources, says: "Subsidence is a slow but progressive disaster, and it is irreversible.
The problem is particularly acute in Chaoyang district, which borders Beijing’s eastern suburbs－areas that are rapidly expanding with dense, high-rise buildings.
What makes the problem more challenging is that many buildings in Beijing’s rapidly subsiding districts are far taller.
One example is California’s 2015 water shortage.
California also encouraged municipalities to actively manage demand, and many imposed surcharges on individual users who exceeded stipulated limits.
China’s demand profile for water does not closely resemble California’s; both markets have high usage for agriculture (64 percent in China and 80 percent in California), but China’s manufacturing activity as a share of economic output is larger than California’s.
This is a crucial step in aggressively addressing groundwater depletion in urban areas, including Beijing.

Water meters to save money.
HYDERABAD: Most housing complexes do not meter the water consumption of residents individually.
Instead, the residents are charged a fixed flat rate.
The individual consumptions are never equal which results in most residents paying for others’ consumption as well.
Now, there is a solution for it, says Vivek Shukla, CEO and Co- Founder, Smarterhomes Technologies.
Each consumption is recorded and sent to the user and billing engine.
Installing WaterOn meters is a simple cut and paste job – cut the pipe, paste the adaptors and fix the meter at every water inlet.” Studies in behavioural sciences suggest that the most efficient approach to driving behaviour changes is to persistently compare consumption patterns of the user with their peer group.
“When WaterOns are installed at an apartment complex, most people can save at least 35% of water and related costs.
If all high rise buildings that currently do not have any metering, adopt smart water metering solution it can result in tremendous savings.
The problem of water scarcity is a growing one.

Water scarcity.
Although water is one of the basic necessities, in Pakistan around 38.5 million people have no access to clean and safe drinking water.
Water unfit for consumption has been a never-ending problem in the country’s slums and underdeveloped areas.
However, now, the same problem has swiftly penetrated in big cities.
The country’s federal capital, Islamabad, also faces the problem of the water scarcity.
A large number of people can be seen at filtration plants queued with bottles in hands.
The CDA has established around 38 filtration plants at different parts of the city, but most of them are either out of order or have become a source of contaminated water because of the lack of care.
According to the director general of the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), Lubna Bukhari, regular chlorination is required at filtration plants to keep water clean, but the same is not implemented by the CDA.
These can, however, be prevented if people consume boiled water.
The CDA is urged to take necessary steps to maintain the water filtration plants to avoid water borne diseases and to provide safe and pure drinking water to the people of city.

Locals stage protest against water scarcity at Jawahar Nagar.
Traffic on the busy Rambagh-Rajbagh road was Wednesday disrupted for over an hour at Jawahar Nagar in the city, where the local residents took to streets in protest against the water shortage.
Hundreds of local residents, mostly women, hit the main road at Jawahar Nagar, alleging that despite repeated assurance, the entire area has been facing acute water shortage.
The agitators, raising slogans against the government, blocked the main road at Jawahar Nagar due to which scores of vehicles got stranded on Rambagh-Rajbagh stretch.
Security forces were rushed to chase away the agitators.
However, the demonstrators refused to allow any vehicle to pass on the one-way road.
The situation was later brought under control after senior civil and police officials assured the agitators that the matter will be taken up with the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department.
Meanwhile, similar protests against water shortage were also reported from Aloochi Bagh on Rambagh- Jehangir Chowk road.
UNI

Ads by Kiosked Vijayawada: Water contamination may hit the city this summer, in addition to possible scarcity as the water level in River Krishna dipped by four feet.
While the water contamination is something to do with people fitting motor pumps to municipal taps in many areas, the water scarcity is associated with 33 per cent evaporation loss in reservoir which has already receded.According to official sources, the water level in reservoir is eight feet at present.
Highlights: Water level at the reservoir current stands at 8 feet Water contamination reported at different places Though this level was just four feet same time last year, the clear water may not lost for long.
Officials are optimistic that the monsoon may touch the State by June first week.They are also hopeful on groundwater which is available at 60 feet.
If this calculation goes wrong in summer, the problem arises.
On the other hand, if the water is drawn from low level of the reservoir, it contains dead things or bacteria.
It also has odour which is difficult to treat.
The other source of water getting contaminated is excessive use of motors fitted to pipelines to draw water from supply lines.
As many as 67 reservoirs at different places are supplying water to people according to a specific schedule.
The wastage accounts for 10 per cent of the supply.An official at VMC said that they have been chalking out plans to mitigate water problem in slums and other localities.

Aurangabad: The city’s water supply system appears to have become quite unpredictable as the main pipeline has once again developed a leakage — sixth in the last 20 days — near the railway station on Monday.
Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) sectional engineer Kiran Dhande said "We had to empty the entire supply line to wield the broken part which consumed significant time.
The long gap in water-lifting will definitely cause severe water scarcity."
He said that similar leakages may appear anywhere between Jayakawadi and the city as the supply lines on entire stretch have become fragile.
Another officer in the municipal body, requesting anonymity, said, there would be frequent disruption in water supply in coming days.
"Ideally the municipal body should discard the pipes as it has become quite expensive to maintain it.
There is only one option to prevent it and that is laying new pipeline," the officer added.
Meanwhile, the 30-hour shutdown threw water supply in the city out of gear on Tuesday with taps in many localities running dry for six days in a row.
Most of the residents in the city are receiving tap water once in three days and those who missed their turn on Monday and Tuesday are the worst affected.
It is difficult to survive without tap water especially during summer," Prakash Deshmukh, a resident of Garkheda.

Govt asked to tackle threat of water scarcity.
Islamabad Pakistan is facing shortage of water while scarcity is increasing with a fast pace therefore government should take steps to tackle the threat, a business leader said Tuesday.
Continued fall in availability of water is taking toll on masses, industry and agriculture but policymakers seems indifferent, said Atif Ikram Sheikh, former president ICCI.
He said that water scarcity is a bigger threat to our security than militancy as the country may run dry by 2025 resulting in violent conflicts in the country.
He said that country may face drought-like situation in the near future if immediate and urgent steps were not taken that include containing wastage of water.
Atif Ikram Sheikh said that it is very alarming that our capacity to preserve water has shrunk over the years while we have world’s fourth highest rate of water use.
IMF has already declared Pakistan as the third most water-stressed country in the world while the economic impact of the water crisis would be immense.
He said that that there is not sufficient awareness among the masses and policymakers of the impending water crisis in Pakistan.
The surpluses of water in summer create floods, inflicting major damages to the infrastructure while shortages in Rabi season take toll on agriculture, he added.
Pakistan is rapidly becoming a water-scarce country but there is little awareness of this looming disaster and its repercussions on social and economic fronts.