The civic body started water cuts from February 29 owing to low water levels in the four dams that supply drinking water to the city.
Even as the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the state irrigation department are busy blaming each other over water supply to the city, the civic body has failed to conduct water audit for the past 10 years despite two government resolutions being issued in this regard.
The civic body started water cuts from February 29 owing to low water levels in the four dams that supply drinking water to the city and water for irrigation purposes in the district.
The water supply and sanitation department of the state government had issued a government resolution dated September 27, 2000, instructing the municipal corporations to undertake energy and water audits and inspect water leakages, but the civic body failed to do so.
On August 8, 2005, the department of water supply and sanitation once again directed the civic body through another government resolution to conduct a water audit, and extended the deadline till March 2008.
But so far the PMC has not conducted the water audit, this was revealed in the audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) from October 19 to 25, 2011.
Civic activist, Vihar Durve sought information on the water audit under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
However, the CAG audit report revealed that the necessary audit has not been conducted by the municipal corporation till date.
The report said that it had invited a tender for conducting the water audit and the bid was forwarded to the standing committee for approval. Interestingly, the mismanagement of the civic body resulted in pendency of recovery of Rs306 crore from metered consumers for the year 2010-11.
The scrutiny of records by CAG revealed that the PMC also failed to check water losses as it was lifting raw water from various sources of irrigation department for treatment in water treatment plants (WTP), but the quantity of water lifted from the irrigation department was not available in the records.
As there are no water
meters installed at the inlets and outlets of various WTPs, it was not possible to ascertain the wastage of water at various stages. When contacted, development engineer (water supply), VG Kulkarni, said, “The PMC recently started a water audit, but it is a huge task so it will take some time. Initially, we are studying distribution of water. We have installed water meters at 19 water treatment plants.”
The PMC started 20% water cut from March 1. The low levels of live water reserve in the four dams of Temghar, Varasgaon, Khadakwasla and Panshet had compelled the PMC and the irrigation department to take the decision.
Although last year the city received 2% excess rain during the monsoon, the water levels at the four dams have gone down drastically, which compelled the authorities to take the decision.
The irrigation department supplies 650 million litres of water per day to the city.
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