LAHORE city has a population of around eight million. If the minimum water requirement of a person is considered to be 20 litres per capita per day (LPCD) as per WHO standards, it gives basic access as 20 LPCD, intermediate access 50 LPCD, optimal access 100-200 LPCD.

At present 160 million litres of ground water is extracted daily via different means like hand pumps, motor pumps and tubewells and delivered to Lahore residents through water supply schemes, water filtration plants and water tankers. Additional water is supplied for recreational and industrial usage.

This supply of ground water is contrary to the practice in the rest of the world where the major source of supply is surface water i.e., rivers, canals and artificial and natural lakes. Despite the presence of such surface sources in Lahore, supply agencies like Water and Sanitation Agency, Public Health Engineering Department, the town municipal administrations and Local Government and Community Development Department are extracting water from the ground without any restriction, and there is no government policy in this respect.

According to WASA Lahore, the ground water table depth in Lahore city has dropped by 600 feet to 1,000 feet. This is an alarming development as the water table depth in the rest of Punjab is between 30 to 60 feet.

Another alarming fact is that there is no water to be found in Lahore above 600 feet. Any reservoir available is highly contaminated owing to the poor domestic sewerage system and the inappropriate disposal of industrial wastewater.

The ratio of ground water depletion is extremely high in Lahore region due to the high extraction, supply and consumption of water. Other large cities in Punjab facing the same situation are Faisalabad and Multan while the same situation also prevails in Karachi owing to its tremendous size and humungous population, being larger than the combined population of Denmark, Norway and Sweden!

Furthermore, the ground water recharge process is very low due to the large expanse of paved areas of streets, roads and buildings. Thus Lahore and Karachi are fast using up this precious resource at an alarming rate and there is no replacement of nature’s bounty. The government should develop alternate water sources.

Multiple solutions for sustainable water supply are in vogue worldwide; some of them are very simple and need to be implemented in Pakistan.

Babar Imran

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2016