Practicable Water Management in a Typical Indian City

The rapid urbanisation and increased population growth of urban areas are experiencing increased demand for fresh water while simultaneously generating more waste water. Due to decrease in open areas and change in land use, the urban areas are generating more storm water as surface runoff. The situation is becoming acute and leading to the imbalance of the environment and eco-system of an urban settlement. In India different cities have different kinds of water management problems which are unique due to the geographical location, socioeconomical growth and climatic conditions of the cities. Many cities face difficulty in disposal of large volume of storm water which creates water logging and local flooding leading to health hazards and disruption in public life. Also, the mixing of unattended garbage in to storm runoff makes it more critical to direct disposal in natural drainage systems. Frequently, the storm water gets mixed with sanitary system during heavy rainfall and consequently the sanitary treatment facilities gets inactive due to excessive load. At the same time these cities are experiencing high fresh water demand due to expansion and modernization. Therefore the biggest challenge is meticulously handling of these three aspects namely supply of increased fresh water demand, drainage of the excess storm water and disposal of waste water. To keep balance between these three major components of urban water management, the systems need to be handled collectively and coherently rather than an independent approach for separate systems. Practicable methods are required to address these problems in an economical and environmental friendly way so that the solution can be adopted with community affordability and social acceptability. This paper presents the viable methods of water management in a typical Indian city.