12 Issues with Piped Water Supply in Birgunj Municipality

Background

Birgunj is a Metropolitan City located in Nepal, which neighbor to Bihar in India. In Birgunj, groundwater is the only source of clean water. The city area is surrounded by the Sirisya and Singhiya Rivers, which are polluted.

The groundwater is extracted in Birgunj with either

• Suction hand pumps
• Suction motors
• Private deep borings
• Piped water supply

Suction hand pumps and motors are the most common choice of water extraction devices. These works on the principle of suction that completely fails beyond 30.5 feet of water head. The seasonal groundwater fluctuation in these areas makes it hard for the water table to remain within the suction limits. Over-extraction of groundwater for domestic and irrigation purposes, and deterioration of chure region which is the recharge zone of groundwater is making the situation bad to worse.

The handpumps are very common in these areas because they are majorly distributed freely by governments and donors. A private installation of a manual hand pump also costs around USD$250 (NPR 33,000). Private 4-inch and 6-inch bore wells are also dug by some individuals and corporate organizations. However, these are costly and cost almost over USD$2000 (NPR 260,000).

The issues of groundwater table becoming more than the suction limit causing a massive water shortage in the summer season. The hand pumps fail in suction for 3 to 4 months in the summer season in Birgunj city areas.

The most feasible and long-term solution to individual bore wells in homes is piped water supply. The government of Nepal is also promoting treated piped water supply in all communities. However, there are several issues with piped water supply.

This article examines the problems with piped water supply in Birgunj, which is a flat terrain area.

Issue 1: Tedious and Initial Connection charges

Taking a metered water connection is tedious and requires an initial connection charge. There is a tedious official process of taking a house connection. In summary, the steps look like this:

• Take a Trace and Blueprint from the survey office
• Pay the current year’s property tax of the municipality
• Take a recommendation letter from the ward office by paying charges (~ NPR 4k ($30))
• Go to the water supply corporation office and apply with charges (NPR 6.3k ($47))
• Buy all the necessary meters, pipes, and fittings from the market (~ NPR 4k ($30)
• Wait a few days until the technicians finally install the connection and then pay the metered price monthly.

This is a very tedious process where a person feels very frustrated doing all the processes just to get a metered water connection.

Issue 2: Pipeline distribution

Water distribution pipelines are not present everywhere in the city of Birgunj. So, if a person wants to have a piped water connection, it might not be available.

However, there is an effort to make new overhead tanks and distribute them to more locations in the city. It needs high capital investments, also due to the need to demolish and construct already existing roads and lay the pipelines.

Issue 3: Pipe Layout

The pipe should ideally be laid on both sides of the road parallel to each other. However, in Birgunj most of the pipes in the cities are laid only on the center of the roads. Hence, taking a connection needs digging at the center of the road to houses, which is problematic.

Issue 4: Low Pressure in Pipe

The pressure in the water supply pipes at the house connection is barely even a meter of water head, which means water cannot be raised even by a meter upwards. Thus the piped water cannot be carried to higher floors directly. It can only be filled in water buckets or underground tanks which should be pumped afterwards.

People are now demanding 4-inch community public boreholes from the local governments. This type of pump lifts water by high-pressure submersible pumps. This can directly lift the water to the rooftop tanks without the need for underground water tanks. If the government supports it, then no one will prefer to take a piped water connection. It should be only preferred in isolated communities.

Issue 5: No Water-holding Tanks

With no pressure in pipes, every home must need an underground water holding tank. This leads to extra added costs to a homeowner. In Birgunj, no homes have an underground water-holding tank. They never needed one due to easy access to groundwater through pumping in boreholes. The piped connection was just taken as an add-on or an emergency to the private borehole pumping.

There is also a risk of contamination as water holding tanks will be close to the septic tanks. All houses have a septic tank in the city and making another water tank close to one another may lead to cross-contamination in an already congested land. Again, there is also a temporary flooding problem in the city which is a risky situation. Using plastic tanks may be more beneficial than making a concrete/masonry tank.

Issue 6: Motorized pumping in connection

Many households directly connect the house connection with suction motors. This is to carry the piped water directly to rooftop tanks, which then supply water to the kitchen and bathrooms.

Motor connections to pipelines are illegal, as the distribution of water will be unequal. There will also be a further reduction in water pressure downwards in the distribution pipelines. The person at the lower ends of pipelines may not get even a drop of water.

Issue 7: Pipe Leakage and Losses

The leakage can be seen at many locations in the city. A general trend of non-revenue water ranges from 20 to 50% (Average leakage: 23.5%) of the total water supplied. This is a challenge for the water supply corporation of Birgunj.

Another problem with this is that when there is no water flowing in the pipe, a negative pressure is generated in the pipe which sucks the polluted water from outside of pipes. This leads to contamination of supplied water.

Issue 8: No F.R.C

There is no free residual chlorine (F.R.C) found in the supplied water. This is due to contamination of water, and improper or irregular dosing of chlorine. The free residual chlorine is needed for safety reasons as it will protect against further contamination of water.

The National and International drinking water quality standard recommends a free residual chlorine be present in the supplied water.

Issue 9: Intermittent water supply

The piped water is not supplied 24 hours a day. The water is supplied in routines of morning, day, and at night for almost 12 hours a day. Hence, one cannot fully depend on the piped water supply without a device to store it and pump it in rooftop tanks. For piped water to be a more dependable source, it should be supplied 24 hours a day.

Issue 10: Low Water Quantity

The water demand is high in commercial applications like hotels, restaurants, schools, and in industries. With the low quantity of water flowing from the piped water supply, it is simply not sufficient to fulfill their water demand. Hence, private borewells might be an option than piped water supply for those high water-demand-requiring locations.

Issue 11: Water Temperature

In Birgunj where in summer, the surface temperature reaches 45 degrees Celsius. In winter, the temperature becomes as low as 9 degrees Celsius.

The groundwater temperature remains mild which usually ranges from 24 to 28 degrees Celsius all year. This means that the same groundwater feels cold on summer days and feels warm on winter days. Hence, people always choose to keep hand pumps to extract fresh temperature-suited groundwater even if they have a piped connection and will always prefer fresh groundwater. The choice of water source is also affected by water temperatures.

Issue 12: No Trust in Piped Water Supply Quality

In Birgunj, most people do not trust the quality of the water supplied through pipes. They are very hesitant to drink it, thinking that it will make them sick.

People are used to seeing water leakage on roads. Some are getting murky brown water occasionally, thus questioning its quality. Most people will not directly consume this water without further filtering it through a candle or RO filter.

The water overhead tanks are also not cleaned regularly and the pipes are also corroded. Even the water supply offices seem unhygienic, thus losing the public trust in piped water supply.

Another reason is that Hindu women also use clean fresh water to use in their holy “TULSI” plants. They use the hand pumps to fill their pots with fresly extracted water and water it to Tulsi plant which they worship as gods.

Benefits of Piped water

There are not only issues with piped water. There are also several benefits with the piped waters

• The water is supplied very cheaply with a minimum monthly charge of NRS 110 ($0.83) for 10,000 liters of water.
• The risk of contamination of groundwater with thousands of boreholes is prevented with piped water supply
• The piped water is a treated source with residual chlorine whereas the hand pump water extracted may be harmful to health with unwanted minerals.

Conclusion

The groundwater is extracted easily by private boreholes. This is with the help of suction motors and handpumps. This has become so common that every household does have a hand pump. Also, the groundwater is generally of good quality and is drinkable without any treatment. This is undermining the value of the water supplied through pipes.

The 1.5-2 inch private borewells are free to construct and are not in government regulations. The problem arises when the handpumps begin to fail in suction for 3 to 4 months in a year in summer. This is happening in the city areas of Birgunj and people are now choosing to have a piped water connection for safety against such cases along with handpumps. Hand pumps will not become obsolete anytime soon in Birgunj even if a hundred percent area has a network of pipe distribution.

Rakesh Shah (Civil and Environmental Engineer)
Author

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