Kathmandu is no stranger to shortage of essential commodities. Long lines outside petrol pumps have become a routine sight, as Nepal Oil Corporation, the barely functional state-controlled oil monolith, struggles to ensure smooth supply. Like the rest of the country, the valley suffers from up to 12 hours of daily load-shedding, a situation which is likely to get worse with the onset of dry season. Likewise, the beginning of summer signals the start of another perennial woe for Kathmandu: shortage of drinking water. Of the 350 million liters in daily summer demand, the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), the sole public water utility supplying the valley, pumps out just 80 million. People have started to speak up against this injustice. Housewives routinely line up outside KUKL head office at Sundhara to protest inconvenience to their daily chores. Nearly every locality has a drinking water ‘pressure group’ to press for adequate supply in their area. With their taps running dry for up to a month, people have every reason to feel aggrieved. Water-ferrying tankers are no panacea. As even the trickle from municipal taps has stopped, every household is scrambling to procure drinking water from tanker operators, creating huge backlogs.
In the past, big promises have been made to quench Kathmandu’s growing thirst (by 2025, the daily requirement of drinking water in the valley is expected to top 680 million liters). The Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) inaugurated in 1998 was supposed to ‘flood Kathmandu with Melamchi water’ in the famous words of late Prime Minister KP Bhattarai. But 15 years on, the project is nowhere near completion, with the earliest expected completion date now pushed to March 2016. If the dozens of stops and starts at MWSP over the years are anything to go by, Kathmandu would be lucky to get water form Melamchi by 2020. But then, are there other alternatives to make up for the enormous shortfall in supply in the interim? On the occasion of World Water Day on March 22, the organizations working in water, sanitation and hygiene sector had with one voice called upon the government to explore rainwater harvesting to help with water shortage in urban areas. This innovative alternative which allows for optimal supply even in dry season deserves attention. Rainwater harvesting as a government strategy has been successfully (and cost effectively) pursued in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
If innovate approaches like rainwater harvesting are not promoted, the water situation in the valley will get a lot worse before it gets better. Much like NOC has failed miserably in meeting the growing demand for fuel, KUKL seems ill-equipped to deal with the valley’s mounting water woes. For instance, if only it could replace and repair old pipes that are supplying water inside the valley, up to 34 million liters of water lost in leakage every day could be saved. Tackling Kathmandu’s water shortage won’t be easy. It will call for ingenuity, proper management of available resources and more than a little political will. Sadly, all three seem to be missing so far.
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