G'nagar highest water guzzler in the country? - Ahmedabad - Cities - The Times of India

G'nagar highest water guzzler in the country? - Ahmedabad - Cities - The Times of India

Gandhinagar is not only the highest consumer of Narmada water in Gujarat, it also has the highest per capita water
consumption among 20 major cities in the country as per an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report. What is worse is that babudom pays peanuts for this precious resource in an otherwise water-starved state.

State capital's water consumption even exceeds cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai although civic authority supplies water only for two hours every day. The consumption pattern is calculated in litres per capita per day (LPCD).

A senior officer of the capital project department which supplies water to Gandhinagar city told TOI that Narmada waters are supplied to whole city covering almost two lakh population. The daily consumption of the the city is 55 million litres a day (MLD) during peak summers and 40 MLD during monsoons and winters. There are almost 14,000 government quarters in the city.

ADB report Benchmarking and Data Book of Water Utilities in India for 2007-08' states the average per capita consumption of water in Gandhinagar is a whopping 250 LPCD. Officials say this would go up to about 300 LPCD as summer peaks. A cursory glance over the report shows that Gandhinagar shares the dais with Jamshedpur that consumes 203 LPCD.

On Saturday, TOI had revealed how Gandhinagar was wasting water with impunity. It gets water supply mainly from Narmada, supplemented by borewells. Like Gandhinagar, in Ahmedabad, the ADB report claims that since production of water is not metered by civic administration, the end user does not learn to value the resource. Only 3 per cent connections are metered in Ahmedabad while there is none in Gandhinagar.

The report goes on to say that unaccounted for water (UFW) in Ahmedabad is not measured by civic administration. A rough estimate by AMC reveals that 45 per cent water connections in the city are illegal.

Nearly 25 per cent water supplied to Gandhinagar residents is used in the upkeep of gardens. Besides this, government quarters get free water. The recovery, from private houses, is just one-tenth of Rs 11 crore spent each year on water supply.

Gandhinagar city's consumption is almost double the water supplied to other Gujarat cities the average in urban areas being 140 LPCD. Rural areas in the state get 70 LPCD.