As the Cauvery water supply gets more intermittent, it becomes clear that bottled water has proliferated in the city.
Whether in large sites on the outskirts of the city, or within congested residential areas, bottling plants are being set up to meet the massive demand for drinking water.
In the narrow bylanes of C.V. Raman Nagar, Mahadev S. has set up a bottling unit earlier this year after drilling a borewell.
“There is a demand, particularly local consumption. Right now, one borewell has dried up, and we have drilled a new one where we get water at 600 feet. Currently, we are extracting 1,500 litres of water, but we can scale up,” he said.
In Hunsemaranahalli on Airport Road, a bottling plant has come up in February, drawing 6,000 litres a day from the ground, primarily to cater to local demand that has seen drastic growth since townships and properties cropped up.
Owners of these companies who talked to The Hindu said they extracted anywhere between 5,000 and 25,000 litres of water daily from borewells. Many companies were set up earlier this year to cater to the increasing demand.
Anekal taluk, which recorded the lowest average groundwater level among the eight taluks, has at least 23 bottling plants functioning.
One company here has drilled their borewell to over 900 feet to tap groundwater.
Bottling units are mushrooming in the city, and the trend is clearly seen in the number of licences being taken from BIS.
In 2014, there were barely 200 packaged bottle companies with the ISI mark in the city (Bengaluru urban and rural districts).
Today the number stands at 340. This is, however, a fraction of the estimated 2,000 companies functioning in the city.
“We are getting more applications for licences. The demand is going up for certification,” said Jessy Binny, head of the Bengaluru branch office of BIS.
The growth of the industry does not seem to be abating. K.R. Sooryanarayan, senior scientist at Central Groundwater Board, said that bottling plants will continue to come up as long as there are no other sources of drinking water for many residents. “Unfortunately, the demand can only be economically satiated by extracting groundwater here. The further the plant is, the greater the cost of transportation,” he said.
Apart from groundwater extraction, there are doubts over the quality of water. Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has said that their market sample testing has shown a significant degree of failure. Since last year, four licences have been cancelled.
Lochanesh Hugar, who had petitioned the High Court to regulate quality of water in these plants, said that regulations needed to be tightened.
“The BIS is supposed to do two inspection yearly, but this is clearly not being done. I will pursue this legally as there is no point in BIS taking a hefty fee for the licences without clamping down on violations,” he said.
