BENGALURU: Some apartments in Bengaluru are selling excess treated water at Rs 100-125 per tanker, even as many others are unable to find tankers with treated water. A fortnight ago, the state govt had granted permission to apartments in the city to sell their excess treated water.
Given that most tankers are being used to supply drinking water, there aren’t many available to ferry treated water. Besides, tankers that transport treated water cannot be used to supply drinking water too. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board has also held meetings with the Bangalore Apartments Federation over the issue.
Rajagopalan R, chairperson, South City maintenance community on Bannerghatta Road, said: “We’ve started to sell treated water at Rs 125 per tanker to anyone who approaches us. But we ask them to get their own transport.”
So people come with tankers and we provide them treated water. We have five blocks. At present, we have 9 lakh litres of water is being treated daily and 5 lakh litres is being used by us internally,” Rajagopalan added. He said they have been able to sell some of the remaining water.
BAF vice-president Satish Mallya said in many apartments, associations are struggling to find tankers to get treated water out of their apartment complexes. “Tanker shortage could be because most tankers have been pressed into service to supply drinking water. We can’t use the same tanker for transporting potable water and treated water due to fear of contamination. Also, as per policy, tankers supplying treated water should be painted pink to let people know it’s not potable. We’ve been told the issue of tanker availability would be addressed by April 15,” Mallya added.
On Sunday, BWSSB chairman Ram Prasath Manohar said efforts are being made to enable usage of treated water – generated both by BWSSB and by apartments – and, as a first step, a partnership has been entered into with BAF and Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (Credai), Karnataka. Pointing out that they have so far received requests for 62 lakh litres of treated water, he said the same was expected to rise further. “…Selling treated water will generate additional revenue for BWSSB too. The supply from BWSSB will start on Tuesday,” he added.
