Vol.13 No. 2 (A) SPACE 2008 The SPA Journal of Planning and Architecture ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT RABIDYUTI BISWAS Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand DEEPAK KHARE Professor, WRDM, IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand R. SHANKAR Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning, HIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand ABSTRACT Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented rate, particularly in developing countries, with high migration of population from rural to urban areas. As a consequence of urbanization and associated environmental impacts, the issue of providing water to growing urban population is becoming critical. Water management in the context of urban area has two components i.e. supply and demand management. The supply side management includes increasing the quantity of supply from existing sources, or tapping additional sources or alternative sources like extraction of ground water, etc. On the other hand the demand side management deals with reduction of misuse, pricing policies, compulsory installation of water meter, water conservation, waste water reuse and recycle, water harvesting, technological innovation and their application, reduction of leakages, installation of better technology in maintaining pressures and maintaining round the clock supply systems. In India urban water management is focused to supply side management only, which may not sustain for a long time because of the limited fresh water sources, increase water demand, depletion of ground water table, increased pollution of the available sources. Increasing dependency on the supply side management may lead to water stress situation in major urban areas. In this paper water management approaches are reviewed with a view to exploring sustainable water management approaches for urban areas. Some of these approaches are applied in residential development in Dwarka, a sub-city of Delhi to demonstrate how these management approaches can reduce the demand supply gap and can be considered as sustainable approaches. This paper also suggests policies for adopting such approaches for sustainable water management in urban areas. 65Alternative Approaches to Urban Water Management 1. INTRODUCTION In India, urban areas hold 310 million people or 30 per cent of the country’s total population (Mathur, 2007). As a consequence of urbanization and associated environmental impacts, the issue of providing water services to the growing urban population is becoming critical (Paris statement 2007). The challenges are more because of the urbanization associated with higher standards of living leading to increased per capita demand of water, depletion of conventional sources like surface and ground water sources due to unregulated extraction of water and reduced replenishment of the ground water. The quality of existing sources is also deteriorating due to pollution. The densification of population living in urban areas and associated construction of buildings results in increase in impermeable areas due to paving and roofs. These permanent physical changes to the catchment invariably result in changes to runoff patterns, frequency of flooding and drainage problems in some locations (Jounathan, et al, 2005). A large amount of wastewater is also being generated within the urban area of which only a small part is being treated and rarely the treated water is reused. The reliance on traditional approaches of increasing supply is not able to meet the increasing demand. Traditionally water supply technologies and system in urban areas have offered linear solution, drawing increasing volumes of water in to cities and discharging waste at ever increasing levels, thereby causing escalating stress on receiving environment (Mouritz et al, 1999). For water deficient urban environments, the conventional supply management options have been found inadequate. Such situations lead to implementation of alternative approaches such as water conservation and demand management approach. The different water demand management techniques have been experimented in various situations with positive result in various parts of the world. But such 66Rabidyuti Biswas / Deepak Khare / R. Shankar techniques are not much experimented or applied in Indian situation to augment the demand supply gap of the urban water supply system. The present paper aimed to review the various water conservation and demand management techniques through the references from representative case studies across the world. Various aspects of water conservation and demand management approaches and techniques like metering, toilet retrofit, reuse rainwater and gray water, water saving fixtures and their efficiencies have been discussed. Further this paper discussed the potential of some of demand management approaches and techniques for Dwarka, a sub-city of Delhi. 2. URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT APPROACHES Generally the water management approaches in the context of urban area are of two types - supply side management approaches and demand side management approaches. The supply side management. approaches include increasing the quantity of supply from existing sources - large big projects (dam, reservoirs, long distance water transfers etc) or additional sources (rainwater harvesting for a larger context) or alternative sources like extraction of ground water. In Indian context the crisis of water is viewed as crisis of availability of water. Thus the solution is prescribed by increasing the availability of water for use i.e. in bringing more of the finite quantum of water available in nature into usable category through supply side solutions in the form of big projects (lyer, 2007). The consequence of large project is not always positive, especially when urban centers are far from the water sources. The unregulated extraction of ground water in urban areas with rapid depletion and pollution of ground water level is a serious concern. The water harvesting is also not getting a proper momentum in most of the urban area as an alternative source of water because of limited rainy days. Therefore the traditional supply-oriented approaches proved to be insufficient to deal with strong competition for available water, growing per 67