Bengaluru has seen unprecedented economic, geographic and population growth in the last two decades. With this growth, the demand for water has grown. Accessing formal water supply (from BWSSB) has been more difficult – so citizens have had to resort to ensuring their own supply of water from borewells or by purchasing it from tankers. Communities often find this self-provision quite complicated as they constantly deal with problems of drying borewells or erratic and inadequate tanker supplies. Managing demand therefore has become increasingly important for these communities, and in the search for solutions, many layouts and apartments are now realizing the importance of water metering.
While some developers have built layouts with consumption metering at the household level, Bengaluru now even has a few cases of apartments retrofitting consumption meters. New metering technologies (such as i-metering with radio frequency readers, for multiple points of water entry) are also being tried out. While Bengaluru has always been amongst the few cities in India that actually meters its consumers – and BWSSB has to be commended on this – the new Bengaluru that is not connected to BWSSB is learning that what is not measured cannot be managed.
Water Meter Face
Metering can be done at three different levels – source metering, distribution metering and consumption metering.
a. Source metering is when you install a meter on the delivery pipe of the well or borewell.
b. Distribution metering is when you install it on critical points of your distribution network such as at the input or delivery pipe of an overhead tank in a layout or on a single apartment block amongst many.
c. Consumption metering is when you install the meter to measure actual consumption of specific households.
d. Source metering is relevant everywhere. If a community has a well or a borewell, it should measure how much water is pumped out of it – and the source meter enables this. A separate electricity meter for this pumping from the source is also critical.
These measurements will help decide what the production cost of water is for the community. Distribution metering is less relevant for smaller communities – but if the community is large, spread over many acres of land or with multiple apartment blocks and the distribution of water is through complex networks of pipes then distribution metering will help identify leakages from pipes. Consumption metering is critical and relevant everywhere – it helps measure the actual usage of water of different households.
Installing meters is just the first step; unless certain processes are put in place, metering can be absolutely useless. Firstly a process of meter reading and recording of readings at regular intervals has to be put in place – while this may sound obvious, this is often the most difficult step. An appropriate person in the “infrastructure management team” such as a plumber or a less skilled person has to be trained to read the meter. Ensuring that faithful meter reading is actually done is not as easy as it sounds – how should one create incentives for faithful meter reading and diligent recording of data?
Secondly, there should be a process of collating and analyzing this data regularly to observe patterns of use across the year. This will help answer questions such as understanding our low, average and high water usage patterns. These are key to understanding the demand and identifying what can be reduced when and where, what can be eliminated and what cannot be compromised upon.
Thirdly, financial accounting systems should be able to capture all costs related to water separately. This financial data along with data from metering will allow the community to understand the production cost of a unit volume of water, and then set a tariff for the water. The tariffs have to be set in a way to foster frugal use of water and penalize extravagant use.
Fourthly, and most importantly, this entire system has to be communicated to the members of the community.cThe community has to buy-in into the system and place its faith in it –therefore communication and assent precede even the installation of the meters. In order to achieve behavioural changes, the water bills that will be given to members, have to become the means towards recovering the cost of supply and a tool to communicate the challenges and issues of water management.
And finally, the management must be ready to overcome some technical challenges to ensure the community’s faith in the overall metering and tariff system does not erode – challenges such as the meters getting jammed because of silt in the water or meters losing calibration. Using appropriate filters to avoid meter jamming, having a process of calibration checking, having a rolling stock of spare functioning meters are examples of solutions to these challenges. Identifying a good meter supplier who can assist and be with the community to overcome such challenges is also critical.
Metering is not just about installing meters or merely having hi-tech meters. It is really about institutionalizing certain processes and effective communication and trust building in the community. Metering is successful when there is a commitment to managing water on the basis of relevant data. And metering is successful only when there is perseverance.