If Bengaluru stops saying 'yuck' to treated waste water, it'll never go thirsty: Experts
Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) of Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, figured a way for the IT hub to stay water surplus. On an average, 20.05 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water is required every year for domestic purposes, CES's technical report established. Of which about 16.04 TMC, about 80 percent, could be met just by treating sewage water, suggested the report. Add to this, the rain yield, which is about 14.80TMC a year and Bengaluru could easily meet its water needs, the report stated. Cut to 2023. Some apartment owners of Emmanuel Heights in Hosa Road, Sarjapur, proposed setting up a sewage treatment plant in October. Little did they know that it would take them almost six months to convince the others. «They all agreed only after the firm setting up the sewage treatment equipment put it in the agreement that they will buy all the treated water. Many people were adamant that not a drop of the treated water should be used inside the complex. Forget drinking, they did not even want the treated water for watering the plants, because they have the tulsi plant,» said Gopidas, a software engineer at Amazon who resides at Immanuel Heights.
S Vishwanath, Bengaluru's go-to man for water conservancy and director of Biome Environmental Solutions is a long-time advocate of treated wastewater for drinking. According to him, it is now all in the mind, as science has already shown that it is perfectly fine to drink treated wastewater.
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