Urban Water

The river, along with its estuarine reach, provides the much-needed green lungs to the city in the form of mangroves. Neglect of this river was the main cause of the catastrophic floods in Mumbai on 26 July, 2005, which claimed nearly 1,000 lives. In what could be a monumental urban transformation initiative to be undertaken anywhere in India yet, ORF has proposed a grand vision for the reclamation of Mithi River. The study report and a documentary film ’Making the sewer a river again - Why Mumbai must reclaim its Mithi’ on the dreadful conditions of the river, was released in May, 2011 in Mumbai.

 the small ponds, the lakes, the rivers flows into backwaters, the sea, and the wells catching the abundant rain water enabling such vegetation and greenery all around……

Water – also the factor, which brings the biggest of problems to urban life –

• mosquitoes,
• bad stench from clogged dirty canals,
• floods and water logging especially in the monsoons,
• roads breaking up because of poor drainage,
• drinking water scarcity in many parts of the city,
• water borne diseases and health problems

As the elevated tracks come up over the city a mass transport network called the metro is being built all over the city. In phases it is likely to cover over a 100 kilometre and become one of the prime modes of transport to the city. Apart from the transport benefits it will bring to the city there is one other potential benefit that could accrue to the city due to its construction.

The metro rail track offers a tremendous potential for rainwater harvesting. A total length of about 45 kilometres and a width of about 12 metres mean that the endowment of rainwater on the relatively very clean track with Bangalore’s rains of 970 mm annually is about 523 million litres. Considering a coefficient of runoff of 0.90 the harvestable rainwater is around 471 million litres annually. This could provide about 13,000 people with their annual requirement of water at 100 litres per day. A substantial sum.

The note complements ADB’s Guidance Note on Urban Water Supply Sector Risk Assessment and offers a framework for mapping governance risks to inform the preparation of future country partnership strategies.

Such a framework covers institutional aspects (policy, legal framework, and regulation); organizational aspects (planning, financial management, procurement, and human resources); and sector operations. While the note has identified entry points for mapping risks to development effectiveness in the sector, lessons from evaluations can augment ongoing efforts for mitigating these risks at institutional, organizational, operational, and project levels; and enhance the development effectiveness of ADB assistance in the sector.

This report by Price Waterhouse Coopers India Limited for the Second Annual India Water Conference in April 2011 presents its view on urban water reforms for the next decade. India is still at an early stage of the urbanisation process and will witness exponential growth in many of its cities over the next few decades. By 2030 the urban population is expected to reach more than 590 million. This will put enormous pressure on all existing resources, especially water. Despite sufficient availability of raw water, many of its cities struggle to provide more than a few hours of water supply.

Improving water availability in the cities requires addressing complex policy, institutional and funding challenges. The core of the new approach will include instituting a new era of greater accountability and a performance-driven approach. Service delivery to urban poor has to be an integral part of this approach to bring about greater inclusiveness.

Recent experience with Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) in urban water supply shows that with a customer focused approach and demonstration of clear benefits, there will be greater political and public acceptability of private participation. At the same time, fiscal framework at the local level has to be considerably strengthened before attempting wide scale replication of PPP. 

It is a part of the peri-urban water security project discussion paper series that aims at having a collection of research papers relevant to the concepts and processes involved in the project that represent preliminary ideas circulated to encourage discussion and comments.

Though the relevant literature is cited at many places, this is not intended to be a literature review per se, but instead seeks to develop a shared framework to identify a set of common issues and questions that merit investigation.

The paper argues that peri-urban can be better understood in terms of its characteristics - a mix of agricultural and non-agricultural land uses, flows of goods, services and resources between villages and urban centers and a social profile that is very heterogeneous and in a state of flux. All these impact upon the local natural resource base, creating particular environmental and natural resource management problems that are often beyond the scope of urban or rural governments alone and require innovative ways of being addressed.