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Compromise on car wash. Water is scarce

Civic agency warns vehicle owners and service centres about ‘criminal’ act.

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Amid fear of water scarcity even before the advent of summer, lakhs of litres of water is being wasted every day by Bangaloreans for washing their vehicles.

The main culprits are car owners and vehicle service centres.

Although the BWSSB) had been reminding vehicle service stations to use treated or recycled water from their own treatment plants, such requests were ignored.

BWSSB officials are worried as the storage in Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) reservoir is unlikely to last beyond January-end to quench the thirst of Bangaloreans.

The water level in KRS dam fell to 82.8 ft against the full reservoir level (FRL) of 124.8 ft on Tuesday. The ground water level is also depleting fast.

BWSSB is supplying 900 MLD (million litres per day) water to the city. However, according to its own admission, over 30% of this is lost due to leakages or pilferage.

The use of drinking water for washing more than 37 lakh vehicles in the city is being viewed as a criminal waste of water which needs to be avoided by utilising recycled water.

While BWSSB is making all efforts to prevent wastage of water, none of the service stations have come forward to use treated water.

According to BWSSB engineer-in-chief K Venkataraju, they had sent many requests to vehicle service centres to use water from the treatment plants set up by the agency.

“We had requested them to use treated water from four water treatment plants set up by BWSSB in Cubbon Park, Lal Bagh, Yelahanka and Vrushabhavathi valley through water tankers. But these centres rejected our requests saying that the treatment plants were located too far from their service stations and getting water through tankers was very costly,” he said.

Sibin, working with a car grooming centre near Mission Road, said nearly 3,000 litres (one water tanker) was used to wash approximately 10 cars.

“If it is a chassis body wash, it will be 6,000 litres for 10 cars. The usage of water also depends on the car size”, he said, adding that even though they had heard of BWSSB request, they did not receive any notice.

According to Venkataraju, 481 apartments have water treatment plants.

“We have directed the apartments to set up water treatment plants in their apartments and use it for washing vehicles, cleaning and other purposes to reduce water wastage,” he said.

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