Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Expert Moots California County Model to Save Chennai from Water Scarcity

Chennai:
Chennai is pumping out 900 mld of fresh water into the sea instead of treating it and injecting it into the ground as has been done in water scarce area of Orange County in California, according to an expert.
Addressing a press conference to announce the 8th edition of Water expo 2014 here on Tuesday, S Sundaramoorthy, former engineering director of Metro Water and director, technical, creative environmental consultants, said that city is going to pay a heavy price in the future for letting out used water into the sea.
While praising the ADMK party for taking measures to build two additional reservoirs to store excess water during the monsoon, he said it should have been implemented long time ago.
He said that California which has about 50 per cent less rainfall than Tamil Nadu has 250 litre per capita of water per day. However, the state has only 100 litre per capita of water per day. He said success of California model is due to tresating of the used water and injecting it into ground rather than letting it out to sea.  This water gets filtered and later pumped into borewells, said Sundaramoorthy, who is also a member of American Chemical society.
He also said that projects to conserve water require funds which is unavailable as cess the people pay is only Rs 60 for the whole month.
Sundaramoorthy also expressed concern that most of the buildings in ECR stretch don’t have sewage network thus polluting the ground water. Many residents are using septic tanks and disposing the waste through tankers, he said. He said a better way to stop this pollution is by each building having a sewage treatment plant.
Naina Shah, editor of water Today said that this year 400 exhibitors from 25 countries have registered for the three-day Water Expo which is going to be held from January 20.
She said that numerous water companies are showcasing their technologies and the country list includes US, Germany, China, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Canada, Korea and France.
She said the extensive three-day international conference and workshop is programmed in seven sessions and two technical workshops. The technical sessions will explore two important and critical issues which include ‘Green initiatives for sustainable water management’ and ‘zero liquid discharge.’
 Dr S Rajamani, chairman of International Union of Environment Commission also spoke on the occasion

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