Not implementing Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) at home may land you in a soup forcing you to pay a fine of 25 per cent of your water bill for three months progressively hiked to half your monthly bill till you harvest rain water.
Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), in its board meeting on Thursday, approved the proposal, which has been sent to Urban Development Department (UDD) for approval.
BWSSB brought in guidelines in 2009 making all sites of 40 ft X 60 sq ft and above to implement RWH with a one-year deadline. Of around 55,000 properties that this applied to, only close to 25,000 implemented RWH.
“It has been five years since its deadline expired. People have been making excuses and not implementing RWH, even as underground water levels are fast depleting. So we have decided to bring in this penalty regime,” said T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, Chairman, BWSSB.
“Ideally, we want to see the regime operational as we speak. But we are working on a March 1, 2016 deadline after which we will start penalising residents. The government has to approve the proposal and notify it,” he said.
However S. Vishwanath, who aided BWSSB in drafting the RWH policy, is sceptical of the new guidelines. He said it is yet to be seen whether the penalty regime will work to bring more properties into the fold. “The main issue is that there is no incentive to harvest rain water. BWSSB provides highly subsidised water at Rs. 8 a kilo litre while the capital cost of RWH is high,” he said.
He also differed with BWSSB on its focus on the core city. BWSSB needs to concentrate more on the outskirts where underground water levels are pretty low, rather than the core city where underground water levels are high, he explained.
Mini STP in all buildings with more than 5 flats
The BWSSB has decided to make a mini-Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) mandatory for all buildings with more than five flats.
The guidelines also include a mandatory two-piping policy for all bathrooms. One pipeline will be exclusively used for flushing toilets using recycled water from the STP.
“An estimated 40 – 50 litres of water is wasted in flushing a toilet every day. Water recycled in the mini-STP can be used to flush toilets, saving that much water. This is safe as the water will not in any way come in contact with the human body,” said T.M. Vijay Bhaskar, Chairman, BWSSB.
