adiadmin | August 5, 2012 |

GURGAON: The recent order to install rainwater harvesting systems in buildings with a covered area of over 100 sq meters by the district administration is an example of how the latter expects others to implement what is lacking in its own buildings.

TOI takes a look at the main government buildings like the mini secretariat, ADC office, MCG office, HUDA main office to see if the relevant structures are up and running.

The Gurgaon district administration had passed the order on July 23 which makes it mandatory for all houses/buildings with over 100 square metres covered area each to have a rainwater harvesting system in place and constituted 20 teams of officers for granting permission to install the system as well as to ensure that it was functioning satisfactorily.

These orders were issued by the District Magistrate P C Meena. So far so good.

However, sadly enough this basic structure does not exist in the main HUDA building which houses the office of the HUDA administrator.

A handful of buildings which have installed such a system like the mini secretariat, the MCG office and Vikas Sadan (or ADC office) might not be functional as desired. There are no checks made as to whether or not such structures are functional.

The DC confirmed that there were four rainwater harvesting systems installed at the four corners of the mini secretariat premises but said that he had not checked in person whether they were functional.

“Officials concerned (engineers) have confirmed they are functional but I have to verify them for myself,” said Meena.

According to HUDA administrator Praveen Kumar, the Sector 14 office does not have a water harvesting system in place. “We are looking at options for installations but we need to make sure the gradient is correct so that maximum water collection takes place,” said Kumar.

He added that HUDA has structures exiting inside parks installed according to the gradient. “The one way to install the system in our building could be through rooftop harvesting systems. We are getting the systems checked in bigger societies but it will take some time. I am also trying to bring in a system which exists in Chennai. The government has made it mandatory that water harvesting systems are installed and functional with a year’s time their sewage and water connection is disconnected.”

When contacted, hydrologist S R Sehrawat evaded questions on whether there were regular checks carried out on such systems. The hydrologist was also clueless about which government buildings have such structures as on date.

Having completed early tests of an energy-saving method for turning saltwater into clean drinking water, Siemens is preparing to take its technology to the product development phase.

The technology, which uses half as much energy as other desalination processes, was tested at a demonstration plant built in Singapore. Siemens now plans to set up a full-scale system in cooperation with Singapore’s national water agency PUB by 2013.

Singapore, an island nation, is one of many parts of the world in which seawater is becoming an increasingly important source of drinking water. However, desalination is an extremely energy-intensive process.

“Our new technology marks a revolution in seawater desalination,” said Ruediger Knauf, vice president of Siemens Water Technologies’ Global R&D. “The results of our pilot facility show that the new process not only functions in the laboratory but also on a larger scale in the field. Because of its high energy efficiency and thus good CO2 footprint, electrochemical seawater desalination can play a major role in regions suffering from freshwater shortages.”

Instead of using reverse osmosis, which requires high-pressure pumps to force water through semi-permeable membranes, the Siemens process relies on electrochemical desalination. The process combines electrodialysis (ED) and continuous electrodeionization (CEDI), both applying an electric field to draw sodium and chloride ions across ion exchange membranes and out of the water. As the water itself does not have to pass through the membranes, the process can be run at low pressure, and hence low power consumption.

It seems strange that water should be such a scarce resource when our planet is drenched in 326 million trillion gallons of the stuff. But it turns out that less than one-half of 1 percent of it is drinkable. Out of the rest, 98 percent is oceanic salt water and 1.5 percent remains locked up in icecaps and glaciers. The stark irony of Samuel Coleridge’s immortal line “Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink” is manifest each year in coastal disasters around the world, like Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, as people within sight of entire oceans are threatened with dehydration.

Between droughts, natural disasters and the large-scale redistribution of moisture threatened by climate change, the need for new sources of potable water grows with each passing day. Each year, the global population swells by another 85 million people, but worldwide demand for freshwater increases at twice the rate of population growth, doubling every 20 years or so [sources: OECD, UNDP]. Throughout the world, our most vital resource is under stress from pollution, dam construction, wetland and riparian ecosystem destruction, and depletion of groundwater aquifers, with poor and marginalized populations getting the worst of it [sources: Gleick, Gold, OECD, UNDP, UNESCO-WWAP].

So why can’t we convert seawater into drinking water? Actually, we can and we do. In fact, people have been making seawater drinkable at least as far back as the ancient Greeks. But when taken to the scale of cities, states and nations, purifying seawater has historically proven prohibitively expensive, especially when compared to tapping regional and local sources of freshwater. However, as advancing technology continues to drive costs down and freshwater continues to grow scarcer and more expensive, more cities are looking to seawater conversion as a way to meet this vital demand [source: Maloni].

Read on to find out how and where seawater is being converted into drinking water today, including how desalination is bolstering disaster relief in Haiti.

Industry and businesses have been affected with several companies having to close or curtail operations.

Kevin Hustler from the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber says:

“We have had complaints that the municipality were warned by residents about serious leaks in the pipes before they burst but did nothing about it.”

Municipality’s infrastructure acting director Barry Martin says the pipe was fixed before 6am this morning. He says the water supply could be back to normal by tomorrow afternoon. We responded immediately, we hired contractors who worked 24 hours flat out to fix it in less time than we had hoped for,”he says.

Martin has asked residents to use water sparingly and to postpone the washing of laundry and other projects requiring the usage of large volumes of water to allow reservoirs to fill up. While everybody should have water soon, the situation will not be resolved completely until the second and larger pipe is also fixed.

The pipes, which brought water from the Churchill and Impofu dams to city reservoirs, were washed away during floods on Thursday. They supplied a third of the city’s water. – Additional report by Sapa.

Businesses in Port Elizabeth’s biggest shopping centre, Greenacres, have had to close their doors after their taps ran dry. Water shortages have hamstrung the city after two main supply water pipes burst. Municipal officials say they are re-routing water to areas without any water.

Water tankers have been provided to supply hospitals and an operational centre has been set up to manage water supply. Repairs are expected to take at least five days. Consumers have been urged to use water sparingly.

Several suburbs in Port Elizabeth have run out of water. This follows the collapse of two main supply water pipes to the city.

Summerstrand, Fernglen, Overbakens, Newton Park and Greenacres are affected, but many others will be without water in the next few days while repairs are being done.

The water supply from the Churchill and Mpofu Dams had to be turned off. The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is supporting residents with water tankers.

Residents have been urged to cut down drastically on water consumption. It’s estimated that the 700 mm diameter steel pipe will take five days to repair, while the one meter diameter concrete pipe about two weeks.

Meanwhile, hospitals in Port Elizabeth have enough water to see them through the next few days and the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has provided water tanks to them as they deliver an emergency service.