What a thirsty Bengaluru can learn from Cape Town

Over 30 localities in Bengaluru are presently getting water only every alternate day and nearly 7,000 out of 14,000 borewells supplying water have run dry. Not surprisingly, the city Bengaluru is being compared with is Cape Town in South Africa which became a global example of a metropolis running out of water. However, Cape Town not only dealt with the imminent possibility of a ‘Day Zero’, when all the taps in the city would run dry, but emerged with plans and investments to try and ensure it doesn’t happen again. Its success story might have some lessons for Bengaluru and other water-stressed cities in India. A city dependent on reservoirs First, a bit about Bengaluru’s water history. Since the 1800s, water was routed from rivers to feed Bengaluru’s thirst. The water that came from the Arkavathi river proved to be inadequate and the city turned to the Cauvery river for its requirements. Over the years, the Cauvery has become the biggest source of water for the city, and even future projects to supply water to outer areas of the city depend on the river’s water. But all the water from the Cauvery isn’t enough for one of India’s growing cities and that gap in requirement (of over 1000 million litres) is filled by water from borewells. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r In the case of Cape Town, the city historically relied almost entirely on water from multiple reservoirs. Dr Zahid Badroodien is a Mayoral Committee Member for the Water and Sanitation Department in Cape Town and was a key player in the city’s plan to deal with the drought. He said the city began picking up that it was in for a long drought around 2015 when they didn’t receive the rains they were used to. And they had just one major source of water. “The city was heavily reliant upon surface water from the dams that we have. There was no alternative water supply at that stage,” Dr Badroodien said. A NASA map of the reservoirs shows how the water levels dropped between June 2015 and March 2018. medium108876990 The city had to stretch its existing water resources and Dr Badroodien says one of the first things they began to target were leaks in the water supply system. This could be big water leaks in the pipe network, or smaller leaks from water meters and taps in homes. Another step the city took was to reduce the water that was being supplied continuously to citizens. The water pressure was reduced, especially during off-peak hours like in the night when people typically don’t use a lot of water. The city also began using pressure-regulating valves that could be controlled remotely. New water meters were also introduced so that some residents couldn’t draw as much water as they wanted while others were rationing. medium nocaption108873696“We noticed that some residents needed more encouragement than others to play their role in trying to conserve this water. So we transitioned from a conventional type of meter to a water demand management device,” Dr Badroodien said. With these devices, households or persons who used more than a certain amount of water in a day would see supply shut off till the next day.Getting people to reduce water useDr Badroodien says one of the biggest takeaways for the city during the drought was that once you’re in a drought, there’s little you can do in terms of new projects because it's already too late. So while the city could undertake measures to limit supply, it was up to residents to ensure demand also fell. The city changed its tariff system with the aim of incentivising water usage. So the more you used above the stipulated limit, the tariff increased proportionately. “I think that the key point that we as a city did was to communicate transparently and honestly about the challenges,” Dr Badroodien said. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r The city also introduced a graphic model to identify households publicly that were using more water than they were supposed to be using. A limit of 87 litres per person per home was initially applied and it was later revised to 50 litres per person per home in 2018.“Residents knew that we were watching them and neighbours knew who was using too much water. They could speak to each other and encourage each other to use less water,” he said.While the move did receive criticism for violation of privacy, the city focussed on the fact that the water resources didn’t belong to an individual or a group of people and was a shared resource. This also focussed on thinking about the city as a collective to stretch the water resources, Dr Badroodien said. Studies like this one have pointed out that in a city like Cape Town, the bulk of water resources are consumed by the middle class and the wealthy. The city’s poor, who constitute the largest percentage of people and live in informal settlements, consumed around 4% of the city’s water supply when restrictions kicked in.Living on rationed supplies of water, Dr Badroodien said residents of these informal colonies were already using communal water supply pipes and ablution facilities. medium nocaption108873746“A lot of difficult conversations happened during the drought between our residents in the formal space who were angry that they were being charged high rates for water while those in informal settlements received free water and sanitation,” he said.The city focussed on communicating that it was a shared resource and also cracked down on things like illegal car washes in informal settlements that used excess water. Dr Badroodien said they focussed on applying rules equally across communities while being sensitive to the realities of those communities.Making recycled water part of daily lifeCape Town also began purifying wastewater through a dual treatment process to make it available in the water system again. Dr Badroodien said the city had to make sure the treated greywater would then be available to businesses, for irrigation in agriculture and for use in public services like watering parks.“All of those mechanisms that we were using to encourage people to use alternative water sources saw a major increase in the amount of water reused,” he said. Nearly 1.2 million tourists visited Cape Town in 2015, and the number rose to 1.6 million by 2018. All of them were greeted with massive signage in hotel rooms, restaurants and public places warning them against wastage of water. Dr Badroodien admits it must have been a shock for many of them who came to experience the beauty and luxury of the city. “You were going to find a sticker behind public restrooms, restaurants, hotels, you name it, which said please manage the water you use, don't flush when you're at the bathrooms, etc.,” said Dr Badroodien. With the Cape Town water crisis reaching level 6, we are challenging our guest to help us save water by using their hand towel instead of their bath towel & only make use of the pillows you need when staying over. For more information contact reception. #capetownwatercrisis pic.twitter.com/jUf9QafKqM

— Hotel Verde (@HotelVerde) January 11, 2018 He said that the treated wastewater was also provided to businesses at a cheaper cost and a big positive for him is that demand for greywater is still high despite the drought having ended years ago. A ‘Day Zero’ that was predicted in 2018 never came. Instead, the date was first shifted and then adequate rains ensured that the city didn't have to worry about its taps running dry. But the city is now working to ensure that it is better prepared to deal with such an emergency again. Increasing water supplyAfter the drought years, Cape Town has been working to add more sources of water and says it is augmenting its water supply by 300 million litres by 2030. One of the first measures undertaken was to remove plants preventing rain water from making its way to reservoirs. “We spend relatively a small amount of money on removing those trees but we save a lot of water,” Dr Badroodien said, adding the move is estimated to have saved them 16.1 million litres of water. medium nocaption108873797The city also has three major aquifers and investments have been made to tap into them and to treat water from them before introducing water into the water network. The city has said it is focused on ensuring the water isn’t indiscriminately used and that the aquifers are allowed to recharge. During the drought, the city of Cape Town also introduced three desalination plants to draw water from the sea. Dr Badroodien said they have now invested in creating a permanent desalination plant to reduce the reliance on surface water. Before the drought, water demand in Cape Town was around 1200 million litres of water and that was brought down to around 500 million litres of water, said Dr Badroodien. Since the drought ended, demand is now estimated to be around 950 million litres, he said. medium108873845One thing he said he finds encouraging is that residents of the city are still implementing measures that were introduced during the drought. Many residents still shower with buckets to catch water, they don't water their gardens in the middle of the day, they don’t use water-based car washes. In some homes, residents bought water tanks to store wastewater that could be reused for flushing toilets or for gardens. medium108873889“Our residents are moving back into old patterns as we've seen, but we keep communicating with them, trying to encourage them to reduce that behaviour,” Dr Badroodien said.Advice for Bengaluru and other cities? Dr Badroodien says the first measure they undertook should also be the highest priority for the city administration of Bengaluru: plugging leaks in the water supply system. “It's a quick win for the city to do that,” he said.The city would also need to be mindful of its depletion of aquifers since it could also raise the risk of mixing of polluted water into the groundwater sources. “It (these measures) will come, I imagine, at a very high cost to the government. But learn from us that it's a necessary investment to make now, rather than to say ‘oh I wish I did that a few years ago’,” Dr Badroodien said. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r He said cities like Bengaluru need to learn from the experience of Cape Town given their dependence on rainfall for water supply and the effects climate change is having on rainfall patterns.“We're expecting lesser rain over the next three years despite the heavy volumes we're seeing now and I really want to encourage them (Bengaluru) to learn from the pain that we had to go through,” he said. There’s been no risk of dry taps in Cape Town since 2018, but is there fatigue with being associated with Day Zero to this day? Dr Badroodien said he’s proud of the fact that despite it being a very difficult process for the city, they are now an example for the rest of the country and the world. “Despite Day Zero having a negative connotation because we think about the drought, it was actually a major success for us, as a city. The fact that we could turn around what to demand by over 40% and to be recognised internationally for our interventions here makes me proud,” he said.