Water For Bangalore - The Tertiary Treatment Option

Whether it is the Cauvery or the ground water table,Bangalore's sources of potable water are fast depleting. Staring at a projected shortfall of 625 million liters of water per day (MLD) by 2013, BWSSB has come up with a plan that will augment the supply by 200 MLD. They want to recycle gray water. That is some way out of the box progressive thinking but the challenge is to sell it to the public. According to the project proposal, submitted by BWSSB to the JNNURM, a water treatment plant at Kanakapura will treat waste water from the Vrishabhavathi valley. This treated water would still contain certain bacteria. It will be further purified at an ultra-filtration plant in T G Halli and rendered potable. This potable water will be later discharged into the T G Halli reservoir. Water from the reservoir will again go through conventional treatment before being supplied across the City. This will generate about 200 MLD of water for drinking purposes and it will take two-and-a-half years to implement the project. However, BWSSB expects opposition from public, who might be apprehensive about consuming treated waste water. This is where BWSSB has to go that extra mile and spend some money to educate people. What are the other places where this has been already implemented? What are the technologies and standards they have achieved? Is there a difference between the gray water in those places and in Bangalore? What is the technology BWSSB implementing? How does it compare? What are the standards that BWSSB aims to achieve? They ought to employ communication specialists and present answers to these in papers, on their website, on hoardings, on FM radio, TV, blogs everything possible medium, in as much detail as possible. It will be a great shame if this progressive project, that can meaningfully address one of bangalore's critical problems and is scalable, environmentally friendly and sustainable does not take off for the want of information and lack of communication. next step rebuild the valleys and do more than kempegowda did. source: Deccan Herald. What do you think?.