Water Auditing & Conservation Management

Introduction:

We know that throughout the history the need for providing water supplies has been met by developing additional resources.  Water conservation is defined to mean storage of surface flows in reservoirs. Of late, the conservation has come to mean increasing the efficiency of water use. Better and effective water management including its practices is now possible through stretching already developed supplies.
The climate changes and present dry weather emphasize the need for water conservation. The indiscriminate usage of surface and ground water also calls for the need for annual water auditing. Both, however, remind us that our resources are finite and therefore its wise use is essential. Accordingly, as a policy, water resource should be managed in a manner that will result in the greatest long term benefit to people.

Broad Elements of Water Management:

Water resources already explored and developed may be used to the maximum extent before new sources are developed.

• Alternative sources of supply shall be found;
• Conjunctive use of surface and ground water supplies and storage capacities, including planned but temporary over drafting of ground water may be utilized to maximum yield;
• Techniques and processes yielding maximum of beneficial use and optimum application for water conservation shall be implemented and waste shall be avoided;
• Water quality shall be protected and ecosystem and biodiversity shall be preserved;
• Water Management, however, is to be based on existing laws, rules and guidelines and use new rules where existing ones are inadequate.
• Water Conservation Methods and Potential Water Saving opportunities

Water saving opportunities exist everywhere but coordination varies from place to place. The greatest potential savings occur in area where large quantities of return flows from excess water applications are disposed.

1. Internal Water saving

The table-1, given below, shows possible factors that can lead to water use saving and water conservation.

Item	Original Cost	Added cost/Unit	Water saving as % of intern savings
New Constructions
Low flush toilets Low flow showers Pressure reducing valves Insulated hot water lines
Existing Constructions
Plastic bottles in toilets Replacing showers with low flow kit or install flow regulators Place low flow aerators in kitchen etc. Pressure reducing valves Insulate hot water  line

2. Exterior Urban Water Savings

These would require:

• Careful landscape watering leading to reduction in use.
• Effective alternative sprinkling system controlled by soil moisture sensing device.
• Public education in lawn and garden watering and low water use landscape vegetation.
• Introducing penalties for waste such as automobile washing.

3. Urban Water Leakage

• Water supply agencies should undertake leakage detecting programme
• Close leaks in a portion of its service area
• Cause repairs to households plumbing leaks

4. Commercial & Govt. Water Savings

Similar actions, as for reducing residential waste, are appropriate for commercial and government sectors.

5. Industrial Water savings

• This can be facilitated through recycling of water
• Conservation measure also to include use of treated sewage and industrial waste water.
• Industries should pay greater attention in their efforts to control waste discharges to avoid penalties for contributing to additional water pollution.
• Industrial water cess would encourage additional efforts to reduce freshwater intake.

Table-2:  A case of potential water saving for residential Interior fixtures

Fixture Item	Water Use		% Savings
	Standard	Improved	New	Retreated
Tank Toilet	20-25lters (L)/ flush (f)	13 L/(f)
Shower	45 lpm	10 lpm
Kitchen/ lavotary faults	20 lpm	6 lpm
Pressure reducing valves	80 pounds/sq.inch	50 pounds/sq.inch
Hot Water Pipe insulator	Not insulated	Insulated
Automatic cloth washer	100-200 liters per load	60-70 liters per load
Automatic utensil washer	28-60 liters per load	28 liters per load

6. Agriculture water Conservation:

The agricultural irrigation efficiency may be increased by changing to sprinkler or drip system improving operation of existing system. Following suggestions are recommended for water agencies to undertake:

• Water Agencies should educate farmers and users about methods for water conservation and advantages of increased irrigation efficiency.
• Undertake motivating actions such as water pricing changes.
• Encourage farmers to plant low water using crops to the extent market acceptability allows.
• Expand irrigation advisory services.
• Military Agricultural Farms may tie up with Agricultural institutes in their areas and avail of Ministry of Water Resources Schemes of achieving irrigation water use efficiency through Central Scheme of FPARP Programme.
• Expand research on means to reduce crop water use.
• Install drainage system where high water table problems exist.
• Ditches and canal be lined where seepage losses occur.

Table-3: Advantages of Urban Water Conservation Methods

Methods	Advantages
Water saving plumbing re-fixture	Reduction in waster water and treatment load
Retrofit	Enable water __________ existing faults at nominal cost
New Technology	Reduce wastewater and cause great water savings
Efficient irrigation	_______ plantation Low Water Use
Leak detecting and repair	Reduces ________water losses Reduce waste water and at low cost.
Metering	Relatively easy to monitor and implement
Pricing	Can be effective __________ to effect consumer saving.
___________ charges on water consumption	Causes reduced water consumption
Education & Awareness	Achieving long lasting results

Ground Water Resources Sustainability Indicators

Ground water indicators are set for quantitative and qualitative variables these focus on ground water resources policy and management. These act as communication tools for planners, policy and decision making and people. Such indicators help in comparing the ground water situation of an area.

1. Ground Water Indicators:

Indicators support date for planning and sustainable management of ground water resources and their future trends. Indicators are basically built around measurable and observed data. These are listed below:

• Social Indicators:
  • Ground Water Accessibility
  • Exploitability and use
• Economic Indicators: Ground water abstraction for drinking and agricultural purposes
• Environmental Indicators:
  • Ground water vulnerability
  • Depletion & pollution

Such indicators are applied at an aquifer regional or national scale and help to assess the aspect of social economic development of a region. We discuss use of such indicators as follows:

1. Ground Water renewal Resources per capita(m3/year): This indicator express total annual amount of usable and healthy drinking water  and water for agriculture, industrial and for ecosystem. Its source is rainfall which is unevenly distributed in the country. The Ground Water Renewal Resources (GWRR) is evaluated using following equations:

GWRR= Recharge + Seepage – Base flow + inflow – outflow + Artificial Recharge
The increase in population in an area decrease per capita availability.

2. Total Abstraction of Ground Water /Ground Water Recharge:

Total ground water abstraction X 100%
Ground Water Recharge

The total ground water abstraction means withdrawal of water from a given aquifer in an area by means of wells, boreholes and springs for various types of uses.

3. Total ground water abstraction/Exploitable ground water resources

Total ground water abstraction                   X 100%
Exploitable Ground Water Resources

The total abstraction is calculated as authorized, unauthorized and natural abstraction. The exploitable ground water is an amount that can be annually abstracted from an aquifer and may be called as usable ground water. It is critical to unify the definition of exploitable resource. It calls for designing sustainable exploitation of ground water resource, inclusive of ecological attributes.

4. Ground Water as a percentage of total use of drinking water on National level:

It, therefore, needs data on use of surface and ground water used for drinking water supplies to formulate indicators to express percent relationship between ground and surface water used for drinking purposes

5. Ground Water Depletion:

The exploitation and withdrawal of ground water leads to water level declines and thus affect ground water storage. The point here is to assess how much water can be safely withdrawn without impairing quantity and quality, ecosystem needs and or surface geotechnical stability. The indicator, therefore, arises at assessing excessive ground water withdrawals. We must here distinguish permanent and regional depletions from temporal ones. The regional ground water level declines are associated with,

• Areas of high density of production tube wells,
• Change of ground water quality parameters (the change in age and origin of ground water at specific locations in aquifer can point out to ground water depletion)
• Land subsidence as direct indicator of unsaturated ground water exploitation.

Ground Water depletion indicator (%) is thus based on a relationship:
Total area with ground water depletion problem  X100
Total studied area

6. Total exploitable non renewal resources/ Annual abstraction of non renewable ground water resources

Total exploitable non renewable ground water resources (m3)
Annul abstraction of non renewable ground water  resources

7. Ground Water Vulnerability: 

It is intrinsic property of ground water system and depends upon ability of system to cope up with human and natural impacts. The vulnerability is assessed by using following indices and their relationship.

• Net Recharge
• Soil properties
• Lithology and thickness of unsaturated zone
• Level of ground water table
• Aquifer medium and
• Hydraulic conductivity of aquifer
• Percent slope of land

According to ranking of indices, the area is classified into vulnerability classes such as high, medium and negligible vulnerable aquifers.

8. Ground Water Quality

Water quality indices help to visualize ground water quality problems. The indicator is implemented with respect to water use standards for drinking, industrial and agricultural water use. The water quality indicator is based on the following relationship:

Total areas of aquifer(s) with ground water natural quality problem   X100
Total study area

The numerator means the sum of the aquifer area in which chemical composition exceeds maximum BIS levels for drinking water standard. Total studies area means sum of ground water bodies under consideration.

9. Ground Water Treatment Requirements

The indicator decreases whether ground water can be made portable. It is accordingly classified into three categories.

• Fit for specific use without treatment
• Simple treatment needed
• High technology treatment needed

10. Dependence of Irrigation Farmers on Ground Water

The indicator uses number of farmers dependent on ground water and denominator is total population of an area. It is shown as below:

Number of irrigation farmers dependent on ground water for agriculture   X100
Total population of the area

The indicator is a socio economic indicator which requires importance of ground water in rural livelihood and household income. He integrated application and use of indicators as above would indicate sustainable / non sustainable use of aquifer while considering both quantity and quality of ground water.

STRATEGIES FOR GROUND WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT (GWRM)

For this integrated water resources management is to pay attention to :

• Dynamics of ground water system
• Interaction between ground water and surface water
• Dissemination of information for use of decision makers and users.

Tools and Methods

• Ground water prediction Models
• Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
• Development of ground water Information Base
• Ground Water monitoring Network
• Use of Remote Sensing & GIS

Water Quality & IWRM

Deteriorating surface and ground water quality are core issues which are likely to impact environment. For knowledge and programming the monitoring of water quality of an area, major categories of pollutants and their possible sources are grouped below:

Category	Natural Occurrence	Domestic Sewage	Industrial Waste	Intense Agriculture	Urban runoff
Oxygen Demanding _________		√	√	√	√
Pathogens	√	√	√	√	√
Suspended Solids	√	√	√	√	√
Toxic Metals	√	–	√	√	√
Toxic Organic chemicals	–	–	√	√	–

BUDGET COMPONENT AND COST FOR WATER QUALITY MONITORING

Should armed forces be interested in organizing monitoring water quality programme in their sphere of activity area, the following points would serve to help plan things.

Budget Component	Facility Needed	Indicative Unit Cost
Monitoring Network design	Consultants	–
Implementation of Network	Installation of Monitoring Wells	Rs 300 – 400/ m depth
Sample Collection	Vehicle/ field measurement kit	Measuring kit Rs. 25000/- to Rs. 30000/-
Data Management System	Laptops, database, process softwares	Rs 3 to 4 Lakhs
Laboratory Analysis	Chemical/ Biological analysis	Rs. 500 to Rs. 7000 per sample

CAPACITY BUILDING IN WATER MANAGEMENT

Broad objective and mission programme for building capacities to take a work of water management is given below:
Vision:  Capacity building for sustainable, efficient and effective water management of water resources particularly with regard to developing efficient delivery system.

Mission Programme:

• Strengthening of Institutional framework
• Development of human resources at various levels
• Awareness creation and education
• Water auditing
• Sensitizing youth and families

WATER AUDITING AND CONSERVATION

Briefly the role of water auditing and suggesting water conservation measures is described here .

• Why should carry out “Water Auditing”
  • To find out status of water source(s) & its use.
  • To yield information on pattern of use
  • Social & environmental issues affecting access to water
  • To identify opportunities for water saving for making equitable use.
  • To check accuracy of available status of water availability into its quality & validity
  • To check spatial and temporal scale at which data is utilized.

• Methodology Steps
  • Basic Data Collection
    • Analysis of current water use
    • Detection of potential leaks in water system
  • Determining opportunities for reducing water use
  • Detailed Water Audit
    • Determine detailed water balance
  • Outline procedure to maximize water savings
  • Follow Rules of 3 R’s
    • Reduce
    • Recycle and
    • Reuse
  • Install water saving technologies & process
  • Continued assessment on Annual basis
• Water Auditing Methods
  • Water audit kits
  • Water meter reading
  • Comparing water metering  with water bill
  • Use water pressure testing devices
  • Use water flow rate testing devices
    • Basically water auditing is an exercise to locate, analyze and quantify each water demand and supply facilities.

CASE EXAMPLES

Institutions:

• Use walk through procedure
  • Create inventory of items that use water in school
  • Draw graph of school water bill vs  annual consumption
  • Locate school water meters for checking data for sufficient period of record at least for 2 weeks and check morning/ evening water meter readings
  • Study graph results for (ii) & (iii) above
  • List out enumeration of water using entities
    • Hand wash Basin
    • Cistern/toilets
    • Urinals
    • Showers
    • Bubblers
    • Sprinklers
    • Water Pools
• Locate above (v) also on a suitable scale map
• Determine daily / weekly water use for lawns/ gardens
• Examine water consumption by plants types

Hospital Case:

• Hospital in big cities are largest water users
• For example at Jaipur Govt. Hospital on a given day upto 500 people may be working and 150 patients are treated.
• Using practice of data logging and data processing daily and hourly usage is determined at site of utilities
• It could be seen that water consumption was taking place by night though site activities were not occuring
• Daily water usage equivalent to water losses of 50 KLD water if detected would represent an annual saving of 77500 KLD .
• Total Water Intake (MG/yr)
• Total water consumption (MG/yr)
• Annual cost of water ( Rs.  )
• Use in cooling compressors – (percentage say 65%)
• Cooling of steam condensation  before disposal ( 5%)
• Process usage ( X ray developers, kitchen, labs) (15%)
• Sanitary and general cleanup (15%)
• Adopt conservation measure to reduce / save upon high water usage
  • Control compressor cooling flow
  • Use chilled water for compression
  • Eliminate condensate cooling
  • Add temperature control valves to compression cooling water discharge lines

Shopping Mall Case:

• These Cover Large area
• Major water uses may include
  • Evaporative cooling towers
  • Food preparation
  • Public toilet flushing amenities
  • Washing
• Water audit to enable possible causes of high water use & high consumption with hydraulic design engineers
• Faulty cooling towers & hot water system are possible feature of high water use
• Repairs to them can reduce water losses

Water Auditing in Irrigation projects:

• Determine amount of water used in different water sectors
• Evaluate & bring out evapo-transpiration and transit losses in distribution system
• Water auditing locates area for consumption and water saving
• Indicator of water auditing of irrigation project
  • Water availability in reservoir
  • Percentage of actual evaporation to projected evaporation
  • Target and achievement of irrigation potential utilization
  • Actual crop pattern
  • Irrigation system performance (canals)
  • Percentage of balanced utilized water to live storage
  • Conveyance – efficiency of main canal

River Basin Level Auditing

• Digital Elevation Model
  

• Global Land use
  

• Automatically Delineated Sub basins Network of Weather Station Locations
  

REGIONAL WATER SUPPLY LEVEL CASE: Integrated Water Resource Management in NCR

Water Deficits: Drinking + Industrial + Commercial