Summer brings with it all kinds of problems, shortage of water being chief among them. When the taps runs dry its time to call in the emergency suppliers, the private tankers. But what happens if they too let you down? As nightmarish as this may sound, Anusha Bhaskar of Billekahalli had no choice but to cope with this very scenario Thursday morning. While used to turning on the tap and finding no supply from the BWSSB she was unprepared for the response of the private water supplier she depends on every third day to meet the shortfall. He turned down her request with a blunt : “there is no water”. Frantic calls to at least 10 other suppliers got her a similar answer : “We are out of stock. There is no water”.

Anusha is only one of many Bengalureans today who are realising that private water suppliers cannot always meet their needs, however much they are ready to pay them. In some localities the shortage is so acute that water suppliers are not able to meet people's requests even when offered as much as Rs 1000 for a 6,000 litre load simply because their sources too have dried up. Most private suppliers extract groundwater from borewells for sale, blatantly violating the law which says they are meant only for personal use. While this may help them fill their coffers and also offer temporary relief to hundreds of households deprived of BWSSB water in the summer, the illegal commercial use of borewell water in the city has contributed to a steep decline of its groundwater table over the years. Worse still, the groundwater is hardly recharged.

“With the water table falling we need to dig upto 600 feet now to hit it, when in the past we touched water at 500 feet. Two of our borewells too have dried up this summer making it impossible to cater to as many customers as before,” says G R Ranganatha, proprietor of Sri Lakshmi Water Supplies in Nagavara. A private water supplier in Richmond Town admits to turning down at least 20 requests for water every day. “Every house here needs tanker water as BWSSB supply is irregular and inadequate but we can only meet the needs of a few of them,” he says. Considering the over exploitation of groundwater, BWSSB minister Suresh Kumar has assured that an ordinance will be promulgated soon to regulate water supply by private agencies to save what is left of it.

Will BWSSB keep its word?
Bengaluru, which usually needs over 1350 MLD of water a day sees a jump of 10 to 20 per cent in demand during summer. The BWSSB is however able to supply only 950 MLD a day, leaving the city to cope as best it can with the huge shortfall. The situation is often so bad that many core areas of the city don’t receive adequate piped water and cannot rely on the BWSSB tankers either as it has only 43 of these vehicles to cater to their needs, reserving most of its tankers to ferry water to new areas, which do not receive piped water as yet. These localities that were once covered by the CMC and TMC and are now part of the BBMP, are served by 100 tankers in the absence of piped water.

Aware that the core areas of the city are having to cope with a shortage of over 400 million litres of water a day presently, the BWSSB promises to come to their rescue once the new Cauvery project is commissioned in June. But whether it will be able to keep its word is another matter as the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme (CWSS) Stage IV Phase II, which promises to augment the city's water supply by 500 MLD, has already missed its March 2012 deadline and could miss its new deadline of June too owing to slow progress of work on the pumphouse and water treatment plant.