PANAJI: Last year,
water resources department (WRD) received an application from a residential complex located in the heart of the capital city seeking permission to install three borewells to meet the residents’ water requirement.
Residing in a similar housing complex in neighbouring
Caranzalem, Tulshidas Kamat (name changed) is not surprised. After all, his building complex of around 350 apartments, spends Rs 8 lakh a year on water tanker supply.
Panaji and surrounding areas are increasingly finding it difficult to manage with piped water supply of only a couple of hours a day.
“We requested the authorities and got a wider diameter of pipe fixed, but the water supply has not improved. We went up to the chief minister’s office, but the amount of water treated for the area has to be enhanced,” Kamat said.
“With all the housing complexes coming up in Panaji (which is part of
Tiswadi taluka), water is proving insufficient,” an official of the public works department (PWD) said.
Shortage of drinking water supply is not only being experienced in Panaji, but across many areas in Goa.
In 2014, Goa’s daily water requirement was estimated to go up to 600MLD per day by 2020. Rapid urbanisation and increase in population caused by immigration has meant that the state’s water treatment capacity of 620MLD today is proving insufficient. Add to this increasing demand for water, the
non-revenue water or water lost during transition from the treatment plant to the consumer.
Minister for public works department (PWD) minister Ramkrishna Dhavalikar recently toned down his earlier promise of 24X7 water supply for Goa and said that the target will be to provide at least eight hours of supply a day in most parts of Goa by 2019.
A WRD official, however, said that providing unlimited treated water supply to citizens should not be the target in the first place.
“If you give 24X7 water supply, people will waste treated water to wash cars and water their lawns, which is already taking place,” the official said.
The state government is currently in the process of augmenting Goa’s treated water supply capacity by another 157MLD through different new plants.
However, a WRD official states that one solution to resolve Goa’s water shortage issues, without continuing to increase water treatment capacity at a rapid pace, is to revive local water bodies in rural areas.
The PWD had put forward schemes for rural areas where two-three MLD of water was to be drawn from a nearby pond or lake and supplied to water-starved areas, but the slow implementation has meant that water shortage in the state continues.
Adding to Goa’s water woes is a floating population of almost 60 lakh tourists, which is four times the local population. The PWD has only now taken up study on how to augment water supply during the peak tourist season.
“Water harvesting also needs to be propagated in a big way in Goa as the state receives sufficient rainfall. Because people are getting supply of water, they are complacent about doing water harvesting. The awareness needs to be created among them about the importance of this in the near future,” said a WRD official.