Sangeetha Narayana, a resident of Jayamahal Extension, woke up to total chaos at her house on Tuesday morning. There was no water and her daughter skipped school as she could not bathe. Ms Narayana made at least 10 calls to private tanker owners who supply water to their area. Everyone refused. “There is no water,” they said. “After two hours of effort, we went to my mother’s house in Jayanagar, where she had water in the sump. It was a forced picnic and we all skipped work. All of us were annoyed,” Ms Narayana said.
Her struggle to go about doing her daily chorus and the chaos at her house was the story all across Bengaluru on Tuesday. Her trouble was shared by most Bengalureans as the BWSSB shut down pumping water to the city on Tuesday morning. All areas in the city received little or no supply. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board shut down the network to take integrate Phase IV of the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme (CWSS) with the existing network and to get power connection for the CWSS Stage IV Phase II.
The BWSSB is not supplying water today (Tuesday) and we had too many requests for water supply. We have limited supply of water and just cannot accommodate any more requests,” said a borewell water supplier in Billekahalli, Bannerghatta Road. Another tanker owner in Rajajinagar said: “Many tankers fill water from BWSSB taps in areas where water is supplied. On Tuesday with no BWSSB water, tanker owners are struggling with water shortage themselves. Moreover, huge number of orders from all corners of the city made it impossible to fulfill the demand.”
Pumping stations in Stages I and II of CWSS were supposed to resume operations by 4 pm on Tuesday. But, they had not resumed working till late evening. BWSSB engineers said the work was almost done and they were awaiting clearance to switch on the pumps. This meant extra hours of shutdown. The Stage III, which was supposed to be shut from 10 am to 6 pm, saw a similar situation.
“The worst is yet to come. The pumps were shut on Tuesday morning, but the ground-level reservoirs in the city still had water which was supplied to the city. Now that the GLRs too have gone empty, there will be no supply. Even if the pumps are switched on on Tuesday evening, it will take them a long time to fill up the reservoirs. The supply will have to first make up for the gap created by the shutdown. Since no extra water can be procured, it will take a few days before the situation returns to normal,” explained a BWSSB official.
The CWSS Stage IV Phase II project is nearing completion and is expected to be commissioned partially by July-end. Tests on CWSS Stage IV Phase II are slated to start in June-end. Once fully commissioned, the project would supply 500 million litres of water every day to the city.