Bengaluru, 27 April

Back in 2016, Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) of Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, figured a way for the IT hub to stay water surplus. On an average, 20.05 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water is required every year for domestic purposes, CES’s technical report established. Of which about 16.04 TMC, about 80 per cent, could be met just by treating sewage water, suggested the report. Add to this, the rain yield, which is about 14.80TMC a year and Bengaluru could easily meet its water needs, the report stated.

Cut to 2023. Some apartment owners of Emmanuel Heights in Hosa Road, Sarjapur, proposed setting up a sewage treatment plant in October. Little did they know that it would take them almost six months to convince the others.

S Vishwanath, Bengaluru’s go-to man for water conservancy and director of Biome Environmental Solutions is a long-time advocate of treated wastewater for drinking. According to him, it is now all in the mind, as science has already shown that it is perfectly fine to drink treated wastewater.

Little over 10 days ago, investment whiz Nithin Kamath, founder and CEO of Zerodha and Rainmatter Foundation, propped up Boson White Water, a Bengaluru-based firm that converts wastewater into potable water, stating that wastewater could be the part of the solution for Bengaluru’s water shortage crisis, on X. Although some agreed with him, most were repulsed by the idea of drinking water that was once sewage.

Replying to Kamath, people started saying, without any scientific backing, that treated water will have heavy metals or hormones and therefore is unfit for consumption. The concern also stemmed from the perception that sewage treatment plants are run in a very bad way.

Vikas Brahmavar, one of the founders of the start-up Boson White Water, said they were deluged with calls after their promotional video forwarded by Kamath went viral. But Brahmavar said most of it again was attempts to reiterate that wastewater, treated or not, is smelly and dirty.

Vishwanath said people are also not realising that treated wastewater is already being consumed indirectly.

He pointed out to the Lakshmi Sagara lake in Kolar, which is the first of 82 lakes in Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts to be filled with treated wastewater from an STP, as part of Koramangala-Challaghatta (KC) Valley project, in which the government plans to fill 134 lakes at the cost of Rs 1,342 crore. -PTI