WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT POLICY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF AN URBAN AREA

Abstract

Sustainable Urban Development refers to community and societal development that "meets the needs of the present without undermining the environment or social systems on which we depend". Sustainable development has become an important guide to many communities which have discovered that traditional approaches to planning and development are creating, rather than solving, societal and environmental problems. The concept also embodies the belief that the world has "finite resources" and, consequently, in order to continue improving the quality of life for future generations, societies must adoptcoordinated approaches to planning and policy making which involves the individual and public on both local and international level. Water is key to sustainable development, crucial to its social, economic and environmental dimensions. Water is life, essential for human health. Water is an economic and social good, and should be allocated first to satisfy basic human needs. Water security is a key dimension to poverty reduction. World population currently stands at 6 billion with47% living in urban areas. Early in the next century, more than half of the world's population will be living in urban areas. It is estimated that by the year 2025, proportion will rise to 60%, comprising some 5 billion people. Rapidurban population growth and industrialization are putting severe strains on the water resources and environmental protection capabilities of many cities. Special attention needs to be given to the growing effects of urbanization on water demands and usage and to the critical role played by local and municipal authorities in managing the supply, use and overall treatment of water, particularly in developing countries for which special support is needed (Dorota Z. Haman, 2002) Indian Scenario India is one of the few countries in the world endowed with abundant land and water resources, it is the seventh largest country in theworld and Asia's second largestcountry with an area of3,287,590 km2 (Compendium ofEnvironment Statistics, 1997). Most ofthe Indian landmass is semi-arid tropical belt characterized by seasonal rainfall lasting over a period of three to four months i.e., June to September over a span of roughly 100 days (Meteorological Department, GOI). The water resources of India are enormous but they are unevenly distributed in space, time and quantity. Average annual precipitation including snowfall over the country is 4000 billion cum. (BCM), in addition; it receives another 200 BCM from river flowing in from other countries. Average annual water resources in various river basins are estimated to be 1869 BCM of which the utilizable volume of water that has been estimated to be 1086 BCM including 690 BCM surface water and 396BCMof ground water. Rest of water is lost either by evaporation or by flow into the sea (Compendium of Environment Statistics, 1997). The population of India was 0.846 billion in 1991 and per capita availability of water in India was 2301 cum/year as against the per capita availability of water in World in 1991 was 9231 cum/year. But this is still more than the average per capita demand of 649 cum/year in India in 1991. Out of 100 countries India's position in per capita water availability is 42nd in 1991. Per capita Availability of water is further expected to be reduced to 1563 cum/year by 2010 (Compendium of Environment Statistics, 1997). Need Of Study The urban population in India is presently about 27.8% of the total population (Census of India, 2001) and is expected to reach 50% by 2050 at the present growth rate. This number would be 820 million by 2050 (Agrawal, C.S., Mittal, S., Goyal, H., 2000), which would further aggravate the currently strained water resources in the urban areas. With rapid urbanisation along with industrialisation there is a rapid increase in demand of water supply but resources are limited. It has resulted in increase in wastewater and untreated sewage which constitutes 80% of the total quantity of water supplied for city. (Report of The National Commission On Urbanisation, 1988). Hence there is a need to evolve - "Water Resource Management Policy for Sustainable Urban Development." There is a severe shortage of water supply in many parts of the country and in almost all the urban centers. Population pressures along with neglect of water resources while planning in urban areas has resulted result in - • Growth of city in low lying areas, • Depletion of ground water (due to excess discharge than recharge of ground water), • Environmental degradation of water bodies due to disposal of untreated domestic sewage & industrial effluents. With growing urban population no thought was given to about ever-increasing gap between supply and demand. In most of the urban areas only ground water is used to fill this gap. There is a steep fall in ground water levels in most of the urban areas as water discharge is higher than recharge. In our country in race for rapid industrialization there were no checks on wasteful technology and pollution of water resources and industry still continues to be the biggest polluter of water resources. This is also the case in Punjab inspite of having three rivers of Indus river basin and network of Canals the main source of Urban water supply is the ground water. This had lead to over exploitation of ground water mainly in the class-I towns of Punjab. There is heavy extraction of water in four highly urbanised districts of Punjab - Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Patiala. The ground water table in state is falling at the rate of 70 - 75 cms per year. The area where water depth has gone below 10m increased from 3% in 1973 to 46% 1994 Urban Water Cycle The hydrologic cycle has been used to represent the continuous transport of water in the environment (Asano, 1998). The urban hydrologic cycle comprises water supply, wastewater disposal, and stormwater runoff systems, making up the total urban water system. However, the history and fragmentation of the water industry has meant that current research is dominated by detailed modelling of only sub-components of the total water system (Newall et al., 1998). Particularly, the interaction between the potable water supply-wastewater discharge network, and the rainfall-stormwater runoff network, is rarely considered. In order to provide a complete picture of the spatial and temporal pattern of water demand and stormwater and wastewater supply, the water balance approach must be adopted along with the nature of urban development. The conceptual model developed to represent the urban water balance, known as Aquacycle, is given in Eq. (1), also known as water balance model; arrows show the way in which water flows between the various surfaces and storages. The urban water cycle receives input both from precipitation and imported water, which together pass through the system and output in the form of evapotranspiration, stormwater, or wastewater. The state of the water stores is used to calculate the change in storage within the system. P + I=.E + RS + RW+AS (1) Study Area Patiala City was founded in 1763 A.D. by Baba Ala Singh when he laid the foundation of "Qila Mubarak". The earlier development of the town spread around the Fort and mud wall (Kot) surrounded the town, this mud wall was demolished in 1878 AD but quite a number of gates still remain. The Mori Bagh Palace whose design is based on the "Shalimar Garden Lahore" with terraces fountains, Canals and Sheeshmahal is a combination of Mughal and Rajput Architecture. The Palace was built in 1880 A.D near Bir Moti Bagh on banks of"Patialwi Nadi". li Patiala city was built on high ground surrounded by low lying areas with number of small and large drains and other water bodies. To protect the city from ravages of annual floods a proper drainage network for the walled city was designed in 1870 A.D. with all the drains of the city culminating in "Ganda Nallah" / "Jackob Drain". The two defence bandh's against floods namely - first one forming outeredge of defence of the city and second on the Patialawi Nadi, were executed in 1889 A.D. After independence Patiala is a seat of Divisional Administration with office of commissioner and other division and state level offices like Income Tax Commissioner, Excise and Taxation Commissioner, Head Quarters of PWD- B&R, and Punjab Public Service Commission D.C.W and National Institute of Sports. With the location of these Important Offices Patiala has developed into a forefront Service City. The city is also an important centre of trade and commerce and is famous for Gota, Kinari and Embroidery work. Patiala is also an important educational centre with a university, four Arts and Science Colleges, a Commerce College, Two Medical Colleges, a Engineering College, a State Education College, a College of Physical Education, Two Polytechnics, etc. All this has lead to the rapid The Patiala planning area lies between latitudes 30°24'-10" North & 30°16'-10" North and longitudes 76°20'-30" East& 76°29'-40" East. The Patiala city is the division and district head quarter of Patiala division and district. It lies in the South Eastern part of state of Punjab. The city is surrounded by Bhakhra main line canal and model town drain on East, Patialwi nadi on the west and wild life Sanctuary - Bir Moti Bagh and protected forest Bir Kheri Gujjran on the South. Patiala Being a Division Headquaters, and a service city has grown rapidly after independence, its Population has increased from 53,000 in 1951 to about 4.0 lakh in 2001. Patiala being a multifunctional town has medium growth rate between 30% and 35%. Demography • Patiala is fourth largest, Class-I city of Punjab according to Population size. Population of Patiala Municipal Corporation is 3,60,663 persons in 2001 with decadal variation/growth of +3 5.63%. • Population of rural areas of planning areais projected as 49,055 (approximately). The growth rate has been taken as +21.19% i.e. growth rate of rural population of Patiala tehsilin 1991. • Taking rate of Projection for urban population (i.e. M.C. Population) as +35.63% and that ofrural population as +19.0% from the growth rate of last decade. Total projected populationofplanning area is 7,22,000 for 2021 and 9,70,000 for 2031. Objectives • To identify the existing water supply system and study the water resource management policies in the study area • Toestimate the potential of all possiblewater resources in the study area. • Toprepare the water resource management planof the study area • To identify and prepare the most appropriate water resource management policy for sustainable urban development applicable for both developed as well as newly planned areas. Methodology • Water resources in an area can be divided into -Surface and Sub-Surface water resources. Both of these depend on - Climate, Geographical location, Topography, and Geology of the area. Thus water resources of an area have a regional character and their behavior can't be studied in isolation to evolve the water resource management policy of an urban area. Therefore the present water resource

management in the study area is analyzed in detail and the existing water resources are studied. Unit Hydrograph is prepared with the catchments characteristics and rainfall data to access the surface water quantity. Ground water resources estimation is made using existing practices. • For the database generation GIS has been used and to understand the impact of urbanization, landuse data in time series has been used. • Assessment of water resource management policies in each urban settlement has been done using GIS and analytical models like SCS Dimensionless Hydrograph, Rational Method etc. • Water resource management plan for Study region and generalizing it to evolve a Water Resource Management Policy for Sustainable Urban Development applicable for both developed as well as newly planned area. Salient Findings Of Research In order to provide a complete picture of the spatial and temporal pattern of water demand and stormwater and wastewater supply, the water balance approach will be adopted, i.e. the application of the principle of mass conservation to water (Grimmond et al., 1986), given in Equation - (1) . This will account for the movement of water in the land phase of the hydrological cycle for a given area of land and a selected time interval (McPherson, 1973). The Urban planning process has been studied and found to be lacking in consideration for hydrology of the area. When ever the master plans are prepared there is found to be no studies undertaken regarding the water availability, supply and infrastructure requirements for the future. To overcome this lacuna in planning process the water balance approach has been adopted. Various tools such as ArcView GIS, ERADAS and Excel Spread sheet have been used in data preparation and analysis. Data for Landuse and Contours has been collected from DTP Office and Existing landuse has been updated using Remote Sensing Imagery. While the data for Water resources from various sources has been collected in time series basis has been collected and analysed using Excel Spread sheet. Arithmetic Overlay models have been used to found land suitability with respect to drainage pattern of the planning area Using D.E.M. and Existing landuse map. Major findings of this Analysis are that with time due to lack of planning w.r.t. water resources, the development in Patiala has taken place in low-lying areas. As ground water has been used as the only source for water supply while other sources like canal water available in the area are being wasted, this has resulted in fall in ground water at an alarming rate of 0.25m. Due to lack of sewage treatment facilities in the city and disposal of untreated sewage in city drains has resulted in ground water pollution in 2029 hectares (i.e. 20.9% of total developed area) and total population affected by it, is 215218, i.e. 41.1% of total population. Three different models for the horizon year of 2031 have been generated using GIS and Excel Spread sheet and have been compared. • In the demand and supply model, the status quo is maintained and conventional technologies have been used for water resource management. This will result in need of 332 Tube wells, Trunk sewer of size between 0.70m - 1.80m. with a centralized sewage treatment plant with a capacity of 400 MLD and a drainage network for run off disposal with a size varying between 0.70m to 2.5m. This will result huge expenditure and over all depletion ofground water at 0.75 m per year. • In the hybrid model Ground water supply is supplemented with canal water and use of rain water harvesting at both domestic and community level, for which Water Sensitive Urban Controls have been Proposed for each land use, but for sewage disposal conventional technology is adopted resulting in non depletion of ground iv water, Trunk sewer of size between 0.70 m - 1.80 m with a centralized sewage treatment plant with a capacity of 400 MLD and a drainage network for run off disposal with a size varying between 0.70 m to 1.2m. • In the Integrated Land and water resource management model, Ground water supply is supplemented with canal water and use of rain water harvesting at both domestic and community level, for which Water Sensitive Urban Controls have been proposed for each land use, and sewerage network for the city is proposed to be a combination of Centralized sewage disposal network in high density areas and decentralized sewage treatment plants in new and low density areas. The type of sewage network for an area has selected using arithmetic overlay analysis. This will result in over all rise in ground water in the area by 0.15 m - 0.25 m, Trunk sewer size is also reduced to 0.7 m- 1.2 m and a drainage network for run off disposal with a size varying between 0.70 m to 1.2 m. By adopting surface water (Canal water - 269.2 MLD) for urban water supply, ground water recharging structures at sector level, the changes in the building bye laws to encourage rain water harvesting, and ground water recharging structures in low-lying area i.e. in drains and low-lying areas (with total effective recharge - 53.8 MLD), and Recycling of sewage/wastewater (total quantity - 246.9 MLD) for recreational and other uses (demand - 81.4 MLD) will notonly reduce the rate of water consumption from 135 lpcd to less than 90 lpcd but will also result in reducing the demand of ground water to 39.4 MLD; Thus resulting in net rise in ground water level Therefore adopting a sincere effort to implement integrated waterresource management plan can turn around the scenario, whichat present looks grim. Conclusions and Recommendations Proposed residential development must be located above 252 m contour level. No land use otherthan recreational and open areas must be located in low lying areas i.e. below 250m contour level, at city level and recreational land use at suitable places in sectors must be proposed according to slope analysis of site to act as a catchment for the runoff generated in a sector. Thewatersensitiveurban controls must be proposed for each land use Circulation should be such as to consolidate the existing surface water resources. Existing water bodies must be preserved and the water bodies which have become redundant mustbe revived. Existing reserved forest must be preserved and a green belt around it must be created to have a bufferbetween forest and the developed areas. Integrated Land and water resource management model must be adopted for sustainable water resource management in Patiala planning area. Water supply should be a designed to be a combination of ground water, canal water, rain water harvesting and waste water recycling. Groundwater recharging at neighbourhood level, sector level and city level must be adopted to recharge the groundwater and it will also help to reduce the runoff generated. Minimum pervious area for each building must be fixed to reduce the runoff generated. Water supply must be designed to exploit both surfaces as well as groundwater resources to avoid over exploitation of groundwater. Sewerage network for the city must be a combination of Centralized sewage disposal network in high density areas and decentralized sewage treatment plants in new and low density areas and sewage must be treated before disposal to avoid contamination of ground water and drains. All industrial and commercial areas must have there own effluent treatment plants be made mandatory.