Almost 10 years after laying the foundation stone for the Bisalpur-Jaipur Water Supply Project (BWSP) in December 1999, chief minister Ashok Gehlot will inaugurate the supply of Bisalpur water in Jaipur on Sunday in Sector 9 of Malviya Nagar.

The project will supply water from the existing Bisalpur dam and reservoir (located on the Banas river, about 106 kilometres south west of Jaipur city) up to Balawala, from where potable water will be supplied through supply systems in Jaipur and nearby rural areas. The project aims at supplying potable water to nearly 53 lakh people in major settlement areas of the city till 2021.

In the initial phase, water will be supplied to Malviya Nagar and Mansarovar. Durgapura area will also get water from March onwards. Public health and engineering department has charted out time bound programme to connect the whole city with Bisalpur water supply.

“The project is being completed in two phases — transmission and transfer. The transmission part being financed by Asian Development Bank, while transfer is supported by the Japan International Corporation agency,” said Agam Mathur, chief engineer (special projects) of PHED.

The Rs1,100-crore project was envisaged keeping in mind the demand and supply ratio of water in the city and some of its surrounding areas. The present 35 lakh population of Jaipur needs nearly 200 million litres per day (MLD), while the supply stands at only 150 MLD. With the commissioning of BWSP, water supply will shoot up to a booming 540 MLD to Jaipur city besides 60 MLD to rural areas by September, 2009. The Stage-I of the BWSP has been designed to supply a total of 540 MLD to Jaipur city besides 60 MLD to rural areas in two separate phases. The Stage-II of the project will increase the supply up to 869 MLD. Initially, water would be supplied for eight hours. Later, the supply will be increased to 16 to 22 hours.

The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system is being introduced for proper control of supply and demand of water in the city. Consumers will be able to lodge their requests and complaints online under this system. The SCADA, with its control room at Balawala reservoir, will connect all production and transfer centres of the project. Modern computers and software will be installed at the control room to assess demand and supply of water to the city.

The department also intends to decrease distribution and transfer losses by 20% for which old bulk water metres, domestic water metres, damaged water pipes and consumer water pipes will be replaced later on.

According to experts, the operation and maintenance cost of supplying the water to the city will be around Rs200 crore per year. Currently, the PHED incurs around Rs90 crore for water supply, while getting a paltry amount of Rs20 crore as revenue from consumers. Almost 97% of city population depends on ground water resources for potable water supply. Consequently, the water table throughout the city area has been depleting drastically over the past three decades at an alarming rate.

“In Jaipur we are drawing out 250% of ground water. At many places in the city, the saturated aquifers have already been exhausted. The water level in Jaipur has come down by 30 metres in the past 20 years. With the BWSP, less ground water use will help in replenishing the ground water level as well,” said Manohar Singh Rathod, a water policy expert.

Factfile:

Cost involved: Rs1,100 cr

Project validity: Till 2021

Executing agencies: RUIDP and PHED

Funding agencies: Asian Development Bank and Japan Bank for Int Cooperation 

Arvind Singh/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication