BMC plans to outsource pipe leak detection

In an effort to curtail leakages along water pipelines that lead to a loss of about 20 per cent of the total water supplied to the city,the BMC is mulling the option of outsourcing the work.

In an effort to curtail leakages along water pipelines that lead to a loss of about 20 per cent of the total water supplied to the city,the BMC is mulling the option of outsourcing the work. Despite numerous efforts in the past to curb leakages either by forming a leak detection squad or by planning to procure modern leak detection equipment,senior civic officials now feel they should appoint private firms to plug leakages.

Of the 3,400 million litres of water supplied to the city every day,a whopping 700 million litres is unaccounted for. This means that it is either lost due to leakages along the 400-km of ageing pipeline network or by way of illegal connections.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Rajeev Jalota said the current leak detection drives are only stating the percentage of water lost in an area,but to bring this percentage down is a challenge. If an area is losing 30 per cent water currently,we will set a time-bound target for the private firm to bring it down to 20 or 15 per cent and gradually down to the minimum possible. We are working out the physical and financial feasibility of this model, said Jalota.

The pilot projects carried out by the BMC in 12 small areas to assess the quantity of unaccounted water in the city have shown that significant amount of water is lost due to leakages in addition to water that is being consumed but not generating revenue for the civic body. By installing electronic flow meters,that arrive at the total quantity of water flowing into that area and the revenue generated from this water supplied,the quantity of unaccounted water is being calculated.

In the Jawahar Nagar area,where 834 such meters were installed,it was found that 11 per cent of water was lost due to leakages and 24 per cent of water consumed for not generating revenue for the civic body. The non-revenue generating water is not only because of unmetered slum connections,but also because of tampering of or dysfunctional meters.

Earlier,the BMC had a squad of specialised engineers and labourers who were solely responsible for detecting leakages. Faced with shortage of specialised and skilled labourers for the job of detecting and fixing leakages,the civic administration had dissolved the leak detection squad formed in 1973 in 2002. This cell also handled situations where leaks were caused due to slum encroachments along pipelines.

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