Imagining water-secure cities

The government has just announced a major initiative for power for all. Could we now aim for safe, secure, affordable water for all? During 2001-2011, India’s urban population grew nearly 32 per cent. Its city dwellers alone (about 377 million) would be the world’s third largest country by population. Even as the majority population remains rural, basic services for water, sanitation, and sewerage in cities are critical.

The last census found 71 per cent of urban households with access to drinking water on their premises. Even homes with a connection received water for only four-and-a-half hours daily, on average. Just a third had a piped sewer system connected; 45 per cent had closed drains for wastewater, which in turn is mostly left untreated (capacity to treat is 37 per cent).

A build-and-forget model for water infrastructure falsely equates pouring concrete with access, extending connections with service delivery, and budgetary outlays with efficient resource use. Instead, water-secure cities need to cover social, regulatory, economic, scientific, and environmental dimensions. 

The social dimension begins with water for all. In Nairobi, water ATMs were installed in slums in 2015, giving access to water at one-tenth the price charged by water vending cartels. In Agra, CURE, a local NGO, set up decentralised water treatment plants, along with women-run water kiosks.

Trust is an important ingredient. Slum dwellers lack land rights, so service providers are doubtful of recovering costs. In Dhaka, DSK (an NGO) guaranteed bill payments, while facilitating dialogues with water supply officials. After more than a decade of building trust, water ownership was transferred to slum dwellers in 2007. Trust also derives from recognising that water is a collective resource. Awareness campaigns in Israel resulted in savings of 10-15 per cent in domestic water use.

A water-secure city accounts for competition with other sectors and sustainability of the resource within the watershed. As new cities develop, the regulatory dimension must ensure minimum carrying capacity to handle water stress and floods. Under California’s Central Valley Flood Protection Plan, cities cannot sanction new developments unless they demonstrate the ability to handle floods. Regulators should also insist on transparency and feedback mechanisms. Jamshedpur’s water utility, JUSCO, managed to reduce non-revenue water (losses from leakages, theft, illegal connections, and incorrect metering) to 9 per cent, in part thanks to a responsive 24x7 customer care mechanism.

Water resources are not restricted to urban confines. Spain’s Upper Guadiana Basin, in response to rapid decline in groundwater, built small dams for recharge, gave regulatory control for water extraction to the basin organisation, and subsidised farmers to conserve wetlands. CEEW researchers found that in the Meerut district, where about half the population is urban, unplanned expansion could threaten about 2,000 traditional water bodies (another 1,000 have already vanished). Mapping, assessing quality, and protecting them could ensure that urbanising Meerut does not rely on water supply over long distances.

The economics of water provision is controversial because tariffs are often delinked from service delivery. Chile’s water tariff reforms in the 1990s incorporated the true cost of water but were introduced over four years. The public participated in tariff setting and the poor were helped to pay bills, rather than not having bills at all. Nagpur’s 25-year-long public-private partnership has a five-year transition period, but includes 100 per cent metering. Under a pilot for 15,000 connections, billed water volume rose from 22 million litres per day (MLD) to 33 MLD.  

Consumers can be given monetary incentives to save water. Australia’s Lismore city introduced rebates against purchase of efficient fixtures; sales continued even after rebates were withdrawn. In addition to rebates, Tucson, Arizona, offered free service to low-income families. Could a Bureau of Water Efficiency in India promote efficient water pumps, similar to how 264 million LED light bulbs have been sold via instalments?

A scientific approach to water needs data and technology. In Pimpri-Chinchwad, Maharashtra, a SCADA system monitors pressure in pipelines, height/depth of water in overhead tanks, water quality, etc., helping the utility detect leaks in real time, save money, improve quality checks, and billing. For city resilience, regular climate risk assessments are also necessary. CEEW researchers have assessed climate risks for Amravati in Andhra Pradesh, and Bhopal, Gwalior and Indore in Madhya Pradesh. A 13 per cent increase in average rainfall by 2100 in Amravati would likely damage energy and road infrastructure, disrupt inland waterways, and add to flood risks. Copenhagen is now designing infrastructure to deal with once-a-century floods.

The environmental dimension of water security depends on valuing the resource. During dry spells, more than 140 MLD of potable recycled water (NEWater) is added to Singapore’s reservoirs. CEEW research finds that treated wastewater from operational sewage treatment plants could meet water demand for an additional 53 gigawatts (GW) of thermal power in five Indian states. If all plants functioned, treated wastewater could service an additional 64 GW in six states. If all sewage were treated, an additional 194 GW of power capacity could be supported in ten states. A circular economy of water would reduce water withdrawals for power generation while increasing economic returns for urban water utilities. 

Water secure cities need not solely be in the realm of our imagination. Examples from within and outside India demonstrate that a different water future is within grasp.
 

Dr Arunabha Ghosh is CEO, and Kangkanika Neog is research analyst, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (http://ceew.in). This is an excerpt of a speech Ghosh delivered at the India Habitat Centre on 18 September. Twitter: @GhoshArunabha; @CEEWIndia; @KangkanikaNeog