Read in the newspaper this morning that "For 110 villages, Cauvery hope dries up", ref http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/For-110-villages-Cauvery-hope-dries-up/articleshow/24506031.cms. It seems the BBMP (the municipal council for Bangalore) had asked permission to take more water from the Cauvery river to supply potable water to the huge area it added to itself in 2007.
Let's do the math: Bangalore should be exporting water to the Cauvery basin, not importing it.
975 mm rainfall/year (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore)
741 square km area (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhat_Bengaluru_Mahanagara_Palike)
722,104,500 cubic meters water/year (calculated by multiplying rainfall by the ground area)
10,000,000 population estimate (8.5 million ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore)
72,210.45 liters water/year/person
197.84 liters water/day/person
So we should be able to support nearly 200 liters of water consumption per person per day for each of the 10 million people in the 741 square kilometer catchment area of BBMP ... if we invested in water management as civilized cities are supposed to do.
Interestingly, the BWSSB claims to supply 900 million liters per day (ref http://bwssb.org/growth/, claiming 900 MLD = million liters per day). That is 90 liters of water/day/person for 10 million people, and 95% of this is from the Cauvery River. That's a lot of water ... a typical single-family home in the USA uses 262 liters/day (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_consumption). With this level of supply already in place, we should also examine where all this water is going.
Let's do the math: Bangalore should be exporting water to the Cauvery basin, not importing it.
975 mm rainfall/year (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore)
741 square km area (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhat_Bengaluru_Mahanagara_Palike)
722,104,500 cubic meters water/year (calculated by multiplying rainfall by the ground area)
10,000,000 population estimate (8.5 million ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore)
72,210.45 liters water/year/person
197.84 liters water/day/person
So we should be able to support nearly 200 liters of water consumption per person per day for each of the 10 million people in the 741 square kilometer catchment area of BBMP ... if we invested in water management as civilized cities are supposed to do.
Interestingly, the BWSSB claims to supply 900 million liters per day (ref http://bwssb.org/growth/, claiming 900 MLD = million liters per day). That is 90 liters of water/day/person for 10 million people, and 95% of this is from the Cauvery River. That's a lot of water ... a typical single-family home in the USA uses 262 liters/day (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_consumption). With this level of supply already in place, we should also examine where all this water is going.
