Water & Our Society !

Dear Friends,

Water was & always is a matter of concern, though when we face water cut then only we feel the pinch is a sad fact. Here is something I will like to share with you which I have wrote to my society residents as a Chairman of the society, thought of sharing with you.

Sanjay Deshpande


Sub: Regarding Water shortage in the building

Dear All,

Please read carefully what I have written below as this is high time for us to think & act too. We all know about the rain situation in & around our Pune city & the minimal water storage available in the dams which supplies water for our city. Since last 10 days the city is facing acute water shortage & our area isn't exception.

The water pressure in the main line itself has dropped down & so as the supply hours, even the tanker water isn’t available & one tanker of drinking water of 10,000 lit is costing 2,000/- i.e.
20 paisa per litter! And look at this, we can get mineral water bottle at Rs 10/lit! Now u can realize the scenario, every time we are using water for any of the purpose even for flushing or washing clothes, we are buying water at costliest rate, which the most of India considers as luxury!

We are fortunate enough to get the water by at least tanker & that too in a day but there are many who don’t have Municipal Tap water as well even tankers supply is not also possible, think about them & how such people would been surviving! Simple, they use the water at its optimism. They use with keeping in mind that every drop counts. I am not saying don’t bath or don’t wash your clothes but have a proper system, for the same. Preferably bath with bucket water, especialy during the crisis. It assure fixed use of water & 2 buckets of 10 liters are enough for a heart bath, while using shower u never know how much water u are consuming & u end up with wasting more than at least 30 lit of water, which we could have saved without disturbing purpose. If you are insisting on using shower then use an alarm clock with alarm of 8 minutes, you may laugh at this but then that’s the calibrated time in which your shower passes approx 20-22 lit quantity of water which is sufficient for a good bath.

Similar things can be worked out for washing machine use, as its one thing which literally drinks water! Instead of keeping it on for whole day & using like an online laundry, we can plan fixed running time for the washing machine, gather all clothes in the day & get it washed during that time. We can think of buying a commercial washing machine & keep it in parking so we can use it jointly. Most of the colonies in western countries have that kind of arrangement & it makes great saving in water as well electricity. Another major consumption is flushing of the commode/wc. We need not have to flush all 15 lit of the flush tank when we use the same for urine, we can have got dual flush tank which ensures just half flush for urine or use poring water by small bucket. The dual flush comes only at Rs 900/- including fitting & can be fitted in an hour. Most of our projects are fitted with such dual flush tanks but where it’s not done, I request you to get it changed & do contact me or my office for any assistance about the same. This saves a lot of water is my experience.

Small things like keeping taps off while brushing teeth or shaving also can help a lot & this thing are being taught at school level to our kids. It’s unfortunate that we have to remind for the things which even our kid’s follows!

Our complex has bore well supply, let’s decide that we will use that only for washing our cars & for that also we can use a fixed time amongst ourselves so as to avoid excess use of electricity. We are already using the same for gardening purpose.

Like electricity we should get installed the meter on down take lines of our complex. It will make us know how much water we are actually conssuming, so we can keep track of savings needs to be done.

To update you about the global scenario, as per WHO i.e. World Health Organization (for an average well to do urban locality), one person needs 135 lit/day water. So for a family of five it becomes 675lit per day, which PMC is supplying. But mind it even the city like Mumbai can supply only up to 90 lit/head to their residents & look on the background of this how lucky we are & its our responsibility to save water for curtailing our own expenses as well whatever water we will be saving is being utilized for some more needy ones too. Let’s make water saving as a habit & not just an act in crisis.

Till the water supply gets normal you can have a control on operating down take valves & the timings can be as follows…

5.30am – 10.30 am

&

5pm – 10 pm

The water line down takes from overhead water tanks will be on only during these timings & rest hours can be used to let the underground & overhead water tanks filling.

Please share this information in your family members as well in friends too.

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev

Chairman, Envo-Power Committee, PBAP

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