Media Release

Mangaluru, May 10: Water scarcity is either the lack of enough water or lack of access to safe drinking water. It currently affects around 2.8 billion people around the world, on all continents, at least one month out of every year and more than 1.2 billion people lack the access to clean drinking water.

Water shortages may be caused by climate change, such as altered weather-patterns (including droughts or floods), increased pollution, and increased human demand and overuse of water. The term water crisis labels a situation where the available potable, unpolluted water within a region is less than that region's demand. Water shortages and unreliable water quality are considered major obstacles to achieve sustainable development and improvement in the quality of life. The water demand in the country is increasing fast due to progressive increase in the demand of water for irrigation, rapid industrialization, population growth and improving life standards. The existing water resources are diminishing (i) due to unequal distribution of rain water and occasional drought (ii) excessive exploitation of ground water sources and its insufficient recharge (iii) deterioration of water quality due to the discharge of domestic and industrial effluents without adequate treatment. This is resulting in water stress/scarcity.

Issue of Water Scarcity In India

As a country that receives sufficient rain, water scarcity in India is mainly attributed to human factors such as:

* India's population has steadily risen since independence. Absence of comprehensive family planning, and lack of education, spurred this. This in turn has increased the demand for water. But, no government has so far been able to equate the difference of water distribution - more than 50% of the country's population lack access to safe drinking water.

* Corruption and lack of planning and coordination are also blamed as factors of water scarcity in India. Many projects to supply safe drinking water are often stuck in red tape.

* More than 80% of water needs of the country is met by exploiting the ground water resources of India. This has aggravated the depletion of water table, and led to an unprecedented water shortage.

Per Capita Water Availability In India

The per capita availability of water in the country is 1545 cubic meters as per the 2011 CENSUS. The average annual per capita availability of water in the country, taking into consideration the population of the country as per the 2001 census, was 1816 cubic meters which reduced to 1545 cubic meters as per the 2011 census, denoting that the per capita water availability in the country is reducing progressively due to increase in population. The daily drinking water requirement per person is 2-4 liters, but it takes 2000 to 5000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food.

Also there are reports that demand for water in India would rise dramatically due to increase in population, rapid urbanization and a growing GDP with significant lifestyle changes.

Solution to resolve these problems

Government and NGOs are already in action and have taken steps to prevent this situation.

* Community-led initiatives
* Government led initiatives
* National Water Mission
* Exploitation of ground water
* Rainwater harvesting
* Farm ponds

National Water Mission

The Mission Document for National Water Mission was drafted by the Ministry of Water Resources through consultative process with full involvement of State Governments, concerned Central Ministries, Non-Governmental Organizations, academicians and other stakeholders.

Five goals have been identified for the National Water Mission. They are:

* Comprehensive water data base in public domain and assessment of the impact of climate change on water resources;
* Promotion of citizen and state actions for water conservation, augmentation and preservation;
* Focused attention to vulnerable areas including over-exploited areas;
* Increasing water use efficiency by 20%;
* Promotion of basin level integrated water resources management.

Exploitation of Ground Water

The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) has notified 82 areas (Districts, Blocks, Mandals, Talukas, Municipalities) for regulation of ground water development. In these areas, installation of new ground water abstraction structures is not permitted without prior specific approval of the Authority / Authorized officer. Moreover, proposals for setting up/expansion of ground water based industries including bottled water manufacturing units are forwarded by State Pollution Control Boards and Bureau of Indian Standards to CGWA for seeking No Objection Certificate (NOC) for ground water withdrawal.

Two Steps Taken to Prevent Exploitation of Ground Water:

Rainwater harvesting: Rain water is accumulated and used for ground water recharge. This increases the ground water availability.

Farm pond: Farm ponds are constructed near the farming field. The rain water which runs off the ground are collected by these ponds. These ponds help agriculture in dry lands.

Some of the facts one should be aware of:

* Toilets may be the biggest water consumers in the home. Dual-flow toilets (using 4.5 or 9 litres of water per flush) may save up to 15 litres of water per person per day.
* A faucet dripping water at a rate of 60 drops a minute will waste12 litres of water per day or 4630 litres per year. It will fill a cup of water in less than 30 minutes.

* Some 20 litres of water may be wasted when brushing teeth. Closing the faucet when not using water will save water and money.

* Water savings in the garden may be achieved by longer watering twice weekly rather than daily, using sprinklers throwing big drops of water, choosing drip irrigation, mulching, watering in the early morning and using drought tolerant plants.

* A ten-minute car wash with a hose consumes 170 litres of water instead of only 21 litres when using three buckets of water – a saving of 640 glasses of water.

Contributions of MRPL for the Conservation of Water

MRPL utilizes municipal treated sewage water from Mangaluru city as make-up water to cooling towers in MRPL which results in reduction of fresh water consumption.

An advanced waste water treatment plant (WWTP) having sequential batch reactor (SBR), membrane bio reactor (MBR), ultra filtration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO) has been commissioned in the refinery. This plant improves the quality of treated effluent and help to recycle maximum quantity of Treated effluent.

State-of-the-art waste water treatment plants are operated by a dedicated team round-the-clock. Quality of treated effluents achieved is always maintained well within the stipulated standards.

Continuous operation of wet air oxidation (WAO) unit to treat spent caustic effluent and to improve the WWTP performance.