Water to pinch consumers' pockets as recycle technology is the mantra

Chennai:

Think twice before you flush your toilet or use water for bathing purpose as you may have to reuse the same water and may also end up paying more for it.

Industry sources told Express that water, which is becoming scarce, may soon cost more with the mushrooming of water management companies which are coming up with new technologies to recycle the waste water or sea water and it is expected to burn the pockets of city’s consumers.

S Suthakar, managing director of Aqua Designs, predicted huge water shortage in India by 2016 and said recycling waste water is a must to fulfil our daily needs.

And the state government is seriously considering the recycle technology as many of the firms have been pitching in their new technologies during a recent expo. Among those include firm from the Germany, the US, the UK and China.

“Currently, 75 per cent of the rural population and 85 per cent of the urban population have access to public water supplies. However, municipal agencies in many Indian towns and cities are unable to increase their water capacities to match the population growth, especially in urban areas,” says Water Today’s editor Naina Shah.

Recycle technology has been a great hit in Singapore. “The country is using a technology which recycles watewater unto potable water,” says Sanjeev Sharma, the deputy head of project sales of the Hyflux Engineering, a Singapore based company. “We have also been demonstrating the technology before the state government,” he says.

  

Hyflux is also bidding for design, build, own, operate and transfer (DBOOT) tenders for the third desalination plant in Kanchipuram. “ We have ultra filtration membrane technology which is far better than the conventional technology of sand filteration.” To a query on the cost of the technology, he says the average cost will be Rs 48 per KL (4.8 paise per litre of water).

Interestingly, it is the same cost at which the government is currently buying 90 MLD of water a day from the Minjur desalination plant. Sources said the government on an average is buying water at the cost of Rs 15 crore per month from Minjur and said water tariff is expected to rise after the polls as the government may transfer the burden to the consumers.