Newmai News Network Aizawl | March 18 In an effort to ease problems of supplying water to Aizawl, Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation (UD&PA) minister Zodintluanga on Saturday laid the foundation stone for Augmentation of Water Supply & Construction of 37 MLD Water Treatment Plant at Tanhril, about 10km west of Aizawl.
The project, sanctioned under the North Eastern Region Capital Cities Development Investment Programme (NERCCDIP), aims at easing the water problem of greater Aizawl.
The execution will be monitored by State Investment Programme Management and Implementation Unit (SIPMIU), Aizawl.
Speaking on the occasion, Zodintluanga said the new water supply project will be able to supply 37 MLD (Million litres per day) of water a day.
The new project, he stated, was good news for the people of Mizoram and residents of Aizawl in particular as the State capital has been facing frequent water scarcity since the present Greater Aizawl Water Supply Scheme Phase I & II have become old and could only supply 34.8 MLD of water a day, which is not sufficient to meet the growing requirements.
Residents of Aizawl will be able to receive 135 litres of water per families a day when the project is completed, he added.
The present water requirement of greater Aizawl, with a population of 3.3 lakh is 54.64 MLD while the present water supply scheme is able to provide 34.8 MLD.
The minister expressed hope that residents of Aizawl will be able to receive sufficient supply and water scarcity will be put to an end by 2033.
The minister also maintained that since the present Greater Aizawl Water Supply Scheme Phase I & II is 39 years old, there is a need for new project which can supply greater volume of water for Aizawl residents in the future.
Zodintluanga said the State government is taking effort to construct 30 more water tanks in Aizawl of which 19 have been completed and the remaining are under construction.

Researchers have found through a study that people didn’t find any different in taste of toilet water and tap water – meaning that they found both the water to be equally tasty.
The use of recycled toilet water is to be made if we want to get through dry months in the future.
Researchers have urged authorities to carry out marketing campaigns to make sewage water ‘less scary’.
Scientists say that people have to accept drinking water that comes directly from toilets amid fears of a global water shortage.
Recycled toilet water is safe to drink because it contains no harmful components, which are all flushed out before it enters the drinking supply.
The ‘blind’ taste test involved 143 volunteers and indirect potable reuse (IDR) water.
Furthermore, volunteers who were branded as nervous or anxious were found to like the taste of the IDR-treated and bottled water more.
However, participants defined as being more open to new experiences were found to find little difference in taste between the three samples.
Half of those people are in China and India.
The notion of drinking recycled wastewater has gained momentum in California recently amid years of drought.

Gleaming new apartment blocks are still springing up all over Bengaluru, known as India’s Silicon Valley, even though there is nowhere near enough mains water to supply those already living and working there.
"There is a severe scarcity of water here," said Nagraj, 30, who moved to the suburban neighbourhood of Panathur a decade ago and has seen it transformed by rampant construction.
"The city is dying," says TV Ramachandra, an ecologist with the Indian Institute of Science who has predicted the Karnataka state capital could be the first Indian city to follow Cape Town in running out of water.
Already, more than half of Bengaluru’s estimated 10 million inhabitants have to rely on borewells and tankers for their water because there isn’t enough mains supply to go round.
Most of the city’s municipal water is supplied by the Cauvery river, whose waters flow through Karnataka and neighbouring Tamil Nadu state before emptying into the Bay of Bengal, and have been bitterly disputed for more than a century.
Rainwater harvesting Ecologist Ramachandra says Bengaluru has enough annual rainfall to provide water for its estimated 10 million people without resorting to borewells or rivers — if only it could harvest the resource more effectively.
Despite years of drought, the government still provides clean water to citizens at heavily subsidised rates and access to groundwater is largely unregulated.
Despite this, Shivakumar and his family have not used a single drop of mains water in the 23 years they have lived at their home in Bengaluru.
His work setting up rainwater harvesting at bus stops, in slum housing and even along the city’s metro system proved so effective that city authorities now require all new housing developments to have inbuilt systems.
"This crisis will force everyone to take up measures like rainwater harvesting and water conservation measures," he told AFP.

The session was intended to discuss problems and solutions for the water crises across the globe; policy on after-purchase of a product, levying water tax, water-friendly alternatives and regulation of withdrawal of common water resources were some of the key points discussed to make people aware of their water footprint.
97% of the total water footprint goes in internal consumption and 3% is used in products/ingredients that are imported.
Hand sanitizers Due to the water crisis, restaurants in Cape Town have switched over to hand sanitizers to save water.
It is also estimated that the usage of a 50-ml bottle of hand sanitizer can save up to 20 litres of water.
Menstrual cups It is true that reusable cotton sanitary pads are environmentally much more sustainable when compared to disposable ones most commonly used.
But even cotton pads are water-intensive as it requires a huge amount of water just to manufacture a single cotton pad.
Apart from that, water is not used in making the cups.
Cups are more water-efficient than any other menstrual products.
The Retrofit basin tap can control water wastage by 80%, the showers and kitchen sink tap controls 60% and retrofit flush saves around 2 litres of water every time it is used.
Though the water situation in our cities may not have reached the extreme and dire state as in the South African city, let us act before disaster strikes.

According to data from India’s Ministry of Water Resources, though the country hosts 18 percent of the world’s population, its share of total usable water resources is only 4 percent.
Experts say India’s gargantuan population increases the country’s vulnerability to water shortage and scarcity.
In 2016, a whopping 300 districts (or nearly half of India’s 640 districts) were under the spell of an acute drinking water shortage across India.
The country’s freshwater is also under great stress.
Five seasonal rivers in the state which had nearly dried up have since become perennial.
Contamination of fresh water sources by industrial waste has sullied the waters of all major rivers.
Now researchers from the US-based World Resources Institute, after analysing all of India’s 400 thermal power plants, report that its power supply is under threat from water scarcity.
The researchers found that 90 percent of these thermal power plants are cooled by freshwater, and nearly 40 percent of them experience high water stress.
Clashes with neighbours — Pakistan over the River Indus and River Sutley in the west and north and with China to the east with the River Brahmaputra — have become increasingly common.
Indian farmers are being sensitized about the latest irrigation techniques such as drip irrigation, and utilizing more rainwater harvesting to stem the loss of freshwater sources.

Today, 40% of the world’s population is affected by water scarcity and 80% of wastewater is released into the environment untreated, according to the new report of the High-Level Group on Water submitted on Wednesday to Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres.
“Water scarcity is a matter of life and death,” Guterres said on the occasion of the publication of the report “Making Every Drop Count: An Action Program for Water”.
For the Secretary-General, this report is a call for a start to find and implement solutions to the global water crisis.
The 12 members of the Group launched a real alarm, calling for a fundamental change to avoid the devastating consequences of this shortage.
More than two billion people are forced to drink unsafe water and more than 4.5 billion people do not have safe sanitation.
By 2030, 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by water scarcity.
To address the water crisis, the Group proposes to double investments in water infrastructure over the next five years and to forge new innovative and inclusive partnerships that include both the municipalities and the agricultural sector.
“Whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you live, we urge you to get involved and contribute to this great challenge: clean water and sanitation for all, and our sustainably managed water resources,” said the members of the Group in an open letter.

Government has officially declared the drought and water crisis plaguing the country a national state of disaster.
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) Minister Zweli Mkhize made the announcement on behalf of the Inter-Ministerial Task Team on Drought and Water Scarcity during a media briefing in Cape Town on Tuesday.
The reclassification of the drought as a national disaster will allow the national executive, to act in close cooperation with the other spheres of government to deal with the disaster and its consequences.
Minister Mkhize said that three provinces including Western Cape, some parts of the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape are extremely affected, and are not yet showing comforting signs of improvement.
Measures to address underlying factors Minister Mkhize said government has taken measures to address underlying factors, including among others, weak intergovernmental relations arrangements in development planning and implementation, ageing infrastructure, lack of operations and maintenance of infrastructure, and capacity constraints particularly with regard to technical expertise.
Heightening drought interventions Actions to take place to ensure heightened drought interventions across the country include: The National Joint Drought Coordination Committee (NJDCC) will meet monthly and continue coordinating integrated multi-sectoral intervention measures to address the drought situation in the affected provinces.
The country will work hard to enhance the weather forecasting capacity to ensure impact-based early warning services to enhance public knowledge and safety from weather related incidents.
This will be done under the leadership of the South African Weather Services.
The sectors will continue activating their climate change adaptation strategies and plans to support municipalities within the provinces.
Municipalities must act by repairing the leaking pipes.

Government this week formally declared the drought as a “national state of disaster”.
Dr Zweli Mkhize, the minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), made the announcement during a media briefing by the inter-ministerial task team (IMTT) on drought and water scarcity in Cape Town on 13 March.
The budget also included more than R500 million in short-term assistance through disaster relief grants for provinces and municipalities.
COGTA communications head Legadima Leso said that the Western Cape had already received R74 million in assistance in 2017, and that requests from the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape had been received.
These were being scrutinised by COGTA, Treasury and the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), and an announcement would be made once a final decision had been reached.
Leso said that applications for assistance varied from requests by livestock farmers for feed, to assistance with transportation of water by water tankers.
They spanned all sectors of society, not only agriculture.
The fact that a national drought had been declared meant that even provinces not elevated to provincial disaster areas could benefit.
The declaration was not aimed primarily at requesting funding.
“It’s aimed at activating extraordinary measures, which might include funding, based on need and other relevant conditions to address the impact of such a disaster,” Mkhize said.

Sokoto state government said it has devised strategies to tackle the current water scarcity bedevilling the state capital and parts of some major towns across the state.
Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal stated this when he inspected water levels at Goronyo dam which experts say have depleted by as much as 90 percent of its installed one billion cubic meter capacity.
“This has resulted in inadequate supply to the water board and in effect, we had to resort to rationing water to the people.
“I have directed the state water board to immediately reactivate 12 boreholes in Sokoto metropolis and build additional ones to supplement what we get from other sources,” the Governor added.
Tambuwal urged residents to be more patient as solution to the problem is implemented.
We are doing everything possible to overcome these challenges.” Tambuwal said since the turn of the year, the sum of N510 million has been released to the water for the provision of water treatment chemicals, maintenance, settlement of electricity bills, provision of gas among others which are needed for effective water distribution.
He equally urged religious scholars and community leaders to pray for early rainfall in the state this year.
Conducting the Governor round the dam site, Managing Director of Sokoto Rima River Basin Development Authority, Engineer Buhari Bature, said the depletion was the worst seen in the dam in over 25 years.
He attributed the problem to shortage of rainfall in 2017, climate change and lack of desilting of the dam.
He said the problem has affected water supply to waterboard and irrigation farming in Sokoto and Kebbi states.

Pretoria – The current drought and water scarcity being experienced across South Africa was on Tuesday declared a national state of disaster by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Zweli Mkhize.
“In the case of the prevailing drought, the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs has the legal authority in terms of the Disaster Management Act 2002 to declare a national state of disaster through notice in the Government Gazette, which is expected today [Tuesday] at around 10am,” Mkhize said as he addressed reporters in Cape Town.
“Accordingly, and in an effort to augment the arrangements that have already been put in place and following the recommendations of the IMTT [the Inter-Ministerial Task Team on Drought and Water], as the minister responsible for disaster management I have recognised that special circumstances exist, and have decided to declare the drought as a national state of disaster in terms of Section 27 (1) of the Act.” Mkhize clarified that the difference between “disaster classification” and “declaration of a state of disaster” is that when the disaster has been classified, but not declared, then the responsible sphere of government – municipal, provincial or national – must deal with the disaster within the parameters of its existing legislation and contingency arrangements.
“It is important at this point to indicate that the declaration of a state of disaster at any level is not primarily aimed at requesting funding.
It is aimed at activating extraordinary measures which might include funding, based on the need and other relevant conditions to address the impact of such a disaster.
Resources, of both technical and financial, should be mobilised by all spheres of government, private sector, non-governmental organisations and communities to implement intervention measures and consider recovery in the long term.” Regarding government interventions following the declaration of the disaster, Mkhize said the National Joint Drought Coordinating Committee will meet monthly and continue coordinating integrated multi-sectoral intervention measures to address the drought situation.
“With regards to funding, government stands ready to provide financial assistance where necessary and subject to legal prescripts.
During the Budget Speech, the Minister of Finance stated that a provisional allocation of R6 billion has been set aside in the 2018/19 financial year for several purposes, including drought relief and to augment public infrastructure investment,” said Mkhize.
“I hereby wish to report that measures are being put in place to ensure that requests for funding are being considered as received from the provinces and we will report progress in the next briefing.” The declaration on Tuesday will cover a period of three months, and government will re-assess if the state of disaster will have to be prolonged he added.
– African News Agency (ANA)