life in general: criminal water-related negligence by bombay muncipality

The last few days has seen an unprecedented number of pipes supplying water to Bombay bursting and millions of litres of water being criminally wasted (see newsreports here, here & here). 

Bombay receives a large part of it its water from artificial lakes that lie 50-100 kms outside Bombay in Thane district (see table just below).

			Supply, as of 2004-05,
Artificial lakes from	Distance	Operational	to Bombay (million
where water is bought:	from Bombay	since:	litres per day)
Vihar	28 kms	1860	68
Tulsi	32 kms	1879	18
Tansa (across 4 phases)	110 kms	1892-1948	455
Vaitama	122 kms	1957	490
Upper Vaitarna	140 kms	1972	554
Bhatsa (various phases)	110 kms	1981-1997	1365

Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC), that is statutorily liable to maintain the water supply lines, has been tardy in the last few years in moving quickly to repair or replace old pipes. See the chart below (click on it to see it enlarged & clear) for an insight into the expenditure level on water supply lines and other civic infrastructure like roads. Water lines should have been getting more financial attention all along the last few years but it is only in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 budgets of BMC that expenditure outlays has been increased significantly. 

life in general: largest rate of groundwater loss on earth

"This is probably the largest rate of groundwater loss in any comparable-sized region on Earth." that study said.

Now, thats chilling .

Its the last line of a latest news story on water woes on our Mother Earth. The focus is on India but coming from a study conducted by a non-Indian entity. Many affluent, educated Indians tend to arrogantly disregard any warnings given by Indian ecologists/environmentalists but do not mind being open to reading about the same coming from international groups. I know of a Editor-in-chief of a top business magazine in India who with unabashed arrogance criticises everything that is written by the head (who is Sunita Narain) of an Indian environmental group, Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

Anyway, even as many urban and semi-urban Indians use water in an excessive, wasteful manner (see the pic alongside for one such wasteful use -- it is of a water park in Bombay, Water Kingdom, operated by a Zee Group company -- I took this pic in Dec '03 specially for a water story i wrote in a Bombay-based NGO's montly magazine), I am reproducing the news report in totality below and after that a summary of the original report in Nature magazine's latest issue.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j3wYwMXHvL0heFLfcre8c_yy0tGwD9A1NK6G0 Study sees dramatic drop in Indian groundwater By TIM SULLIVAN (AP)
NEW DELHI — Excessive irrigation and the unrelenting thirst of tens of millions of people are causing groundwater levels in northern India to drop dramatically, a problem that could lead to severe water shortages, according to a study released Wednesday.
The study comes as India's struggles with water have become a major political issue. The problem reaches across the country's vast class divide, touching everyone from residents of elite neighborhoods where the taps regularly go dry to poor farmers in desperate need of irrigation to grow their crops.
Giving free electricity to farmers — who use that electricity to pump more groundwater — has become a common promise by campaigning politicians. That, though, simply makes the problem worse.
"This issue is of grave importance," said K. Sreelakshmi, a natural resource economist at New Delhi's Energy and Resources Institute, TERI. Sreelakshmi, who was not connected to the study, noted that previous research projects had revealed lowering groundwater, though this one used a new approach by relying on satellite data. "The question is what do we do about the problem," she said. "How do we recharge" India's dropping water table?
The study, led by Matthew Rodell of the United States' NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, indicated that groundwater across a swath of India from New Delhi into heavily farmed agricultural belts dropped at a rate of 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) per year between August 2002 and October 2008. That decrease in groundwater is more than double the capacity of India's largest reservoir.
The study noted that the drop in groundwater came in years where there was no shortage of rainfall to cause a natural decline. The region, though, has seen an enormous increase in water use since the 1960s. Part of that is because of the growing population, though even more resulted from the so-called Green Revolution, which dramatically increased India's agricultural production — in part by exponentially expanding the use of groundwater for irrigation.
"Severe groundwater depletion is occurring as a result of human consumption," the researchers concluded in the study, released online in the journal Nature.
The study was based largely on data provided by GRACE — the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment — a satellite system launched in 2002 by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. GRACE allows scientists to estimate changes in groundwater storage by measuring tiny variations in the Earth's gravitational pull.
Another recent study based on GRACE data, using results from a 1,200-mile (2,000-kilometer) swath across eastern Pakistan, northern India and into Bangladesh, showed about 1.9 million cubic feet (54 cubic kilometers) of groundwater lost per year.
That study, in Geophysical Research Letters, was led by geophysicists Virendra Tiwari of the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, India; John Wahr of the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Sean Swenson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
"This is probably the largest rate of groundwater loss in any comparable-sized region on Earth," that study said.
On the Net: Nature magazine: http://www.nature.com/nature
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08238.html

Satellite-based estimates of groundwater depletion in India
Matthew Rodell1, Isabella Velicogna2,3,4 & James S. Famiglietti2

1. Hydrological Sciences Branch, Code 614.3, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
2. Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-3100, USA
3. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109-8099, USA
4. Department of Physics, University of Udine, 208 Via delle Scienze, 33100 Udine, Italy

Correspondence to: Matthew Rodell1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.R. (Email: matthew.rodell@nasa.gov).

Groundwater is a primary source of fresh water in many parts of the world. Some regions are becoming overly dependent on it, consuming groundwater faster than it is naturally replenished and causing water tables to decline unremittingly1. Indirect evidence suggests that this is the case in northwest India2, but there has been no regional assessment of the rate of groundwater depletion. Here we use terrestrial water storage-change observations from the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites3 and simulated soil-water variations from a data-integrating hydrological modelling system4 to show that groundwater is being depleted at a mean rate of 4.0 plusminus 1.0 cm yr-1 equivalent height of water (17.7 plusminus 4.5 km3 yr-1) over the Indian states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana (including Delhi).
During our study period of August 2002 to October 2008, groundwater depletion was equivalent to a net loss of 109 km3 of water, which is double the capacity of India's largest surface-water reservoir. Annual rainfall was close to normal throughout the period and we demonstrate that the other terrestrial water storage components (soil moisture, surface waters, snow, glaciers and biomass) did not contribute significantly to the observed decline in total water levels. Although our observational record is brief, the available evidence suggests that unsustainable consumption of groundwater for irrigation and other anthropogenic uses is likely to be the cause.
If measures are not taken soon to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, the consequences for the 114,000,000 residents of the region may include a reduction of agricultural output and shortages of potable water, leading to extensive socioeconomic stresses.

life in general: monsoon eludes bombay & north of it!

In my previous (last Friday) blog post on monsoon, I posted a satellite picture of the Indian sub-continent from the University of Dundee's satellite receiving station. In that picture, you can see a large cloud formation taking place deep inside the Arabian Sea.

Well, look at the latest (yesterday evening's) satellite picture below (click on the image to see it enlarged). That large cloud formation has now approached the Indian coast. But it is to the south west of Bombay and if winds, as they have been in the last many days, continue to flow from west to east (instead of south-west to north-east as they normally do during this time of the year) then Bombay could be in serious trouble. If no new big cloud formations form quickly that moves in the direction of Bombay and north of it, there won't be any decent amount of rainfall for another 2 weeks at least.

As per Indian Meteorological Department's (IMD's) regional centre in Bombay, the rainfall-measuring centres in Colaba and Santacruz have recorded, (till now in this year's monsoon season), a rainfall of only 5.5 millimeters and 0.1 millimeters that, compared to the IMD normal figures for 18 June is short by 227 millimeters and 205 millimeters respectively.

IMD's report of 10 June for Maharashtra and Goa revealed the following facts:

WEATHER DURING THE WEEK ENDING ON 10-06-2009

CHIEF FEATURES : . South West monsoon further advanced into some more parts of Central Arabian Sea on 06th June.The Northern limit of monsoon passed through 15 o N/ 60 o E ,15 o N/ 70 o E and Karwar. On 7th it further advanced into some more parts of Central Arabian Sea, entire Goa State and some more parts of South Konkan. The Northern limit of monsoon passed through 17 o N/ 60 o E ,17 o N/ 70 o E, Ratnagiri and Gadag.

a) Districtwise rainfall for the week ending 13-06-2009 ( From 04-06-2009 to 10-06-2009 )

Excess Goa,Sindhudurg,Gadchiroli,Chandrapur Normal Ahmednagar,Pune,Sangli,Satara,Nagpur,Bhandara. Deficient ratnagiri,Kolhapur, Scanty Mumbai,Raigad,Nandurbar,Nashik,Solapur,Aurangabad,Beed,Jalna,Latur,Nanded,Osmanabad,Parbhani,Amaravati,Buldhana,Gondia,Wardha,Washim,Yeotmal No Rain Thane,Dhule,Jalgaon,Akola, DNA

In Bombay, to make matters much worse, the 4-5 artificially-constructed lakes 100-200 kms to the north-east and north of Bombay are seeing their water levels (from last year's monsoon) fall. See the newsreport here or read it below the satellite image below. Water, in the meanwhile, continues to used recklessly and wastefully by the affluent citizens of Bombay. It is a criminal waste as I have highlighted in a couple of past blog posts. But BMC and the mainstream media will continue to maintain a criminal silence on it and do absolutely nothing about it. Shame on such Indians!



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Get-set-for-more-water-cuts-if-it-does-not-rain-soon/articleshow/4668876.cms
18 Jun 2009, 0049 hrs IST, Sukhada Tatke , TNN
There is more bad news for the city which is already facing a 10% water cut. More water cuts seem imminent if it does not rain by the end of the week as the dipping lake levels have become a cause for concern.
The city right now has water reserves to last only up to a fortnight. Of the six lakes that supply water to the city, the Vihar and the Upper Vaitarna have already reached the lowest drawable level. The Tansa and the Tulsi have enough water to last for a week and the Bhatsa and the Modak Sagar can continue supplying water with ease till the end of the month.
Civic officials say they cannot take the risk of using up all the water that is there now and that is why more water cuts may be a reality. "The water levels are dripping drastically. This will pose a major problem next year. The situation is very grim, the meteorological department has not been able to give us a proper prediction,'' said a senior civic official.
Hydraulic chief S S Korlekar said the department would have to assess the situation and come to a conclusion soon. "We have to still decide on how much further we need to increase the cut,'' he said.
The hydraulic department, in its white paper tabled at the civic standing committee on Wednesday, blamed unplanned and rapid development in the past three decades for the water scarcity in the city and warned the situation might worsen if the state and the BMC continued to provide FSI and TDR sops. But civic chief Jairaj Phatak said: "FSI does not necessarily lead to population growth. Even if there is an increase in FSI, the same people get rehabilitated after redevelopment,'' he justified. However, corporators cried foul saying that the explanation was not good enough.
"The white paper clearly says that the water supply network has been planned on the basis of norms formulated in the Development Control (DC) Regulations, 1991, where FSI for the island city and suburbs was restricted to 1.33 and 1. Phatak always presented the amendments in the DC rules in a positive light,'' BJP leader Ashish Shelar said.
The white paper says: "The incentive FSI and TDR perquisites for slum and private redevelopment of new and dilapidated buildings have put severe burden on it, leading to reduced water supply.''