NEERI using potable water enough for 1.7L people to keep campus green

Nagpur: National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) is country’s premier environmental engineering institute and preaches sound ecological practices to everyone. However, it uses over two crore litres of potable water each month to maintain gardens and landscaping on its 108 acre campus on Wardha Road in the city -- a criminal waste when the state is reeling under severe drought.
The potable water NEERI utilizes can easily be replaced by either groundwater from its own campus or by recycling treated sewage, a technology it provides to others. The water saved would be enough to meet the essential needs of nearly 1.7 lakh people, or population of five big municipal wards like Mahal put together.
NEERI launched phytorid wastewater treatment technology at Maharajbag Zoo for treating sewage flowing through the nullah and using the water to maintain greenery inside the zoo. For some reason, it never thought of using any such technology at its own premises so that they could minimize the use of tap water.
NEERI has administrative offices and and research labs on its main campus along Wardha Road while it has residential colony at Laxmi Nagar sandwiched between East and West High Court roads.
At any point of time, not more than 1000 people live on the campus , including the staffers and their families. According to national standards, one person needs 135 litres water everyday. Thus NEERI should not be consuming more than 40.5 litres of potable water every month.
In reality, NEERI drawn an astounding 2.67 crore litres of potable water from municipal supply every month. The NMC supplies water to NEERI through two connections. As per NMC data, 2,16,90,000 litres are supplied through one connection and 50,32,000 litres through second one. At NEERI’s, water from both the connection empties into one sump and from there it is pumped to different areas for use.
Take out 40.5 lakh litres of legitimate household and personal use for maximum of 1,000 people (actual number likely to be much less) and you’re left with 2,26,72,000 litres water that goes into uses like gardening and maintaining of landscaping and greenery. NEERI pays around 7 lakh water per month at about 26 per unit. If it were to utilize own ground water or treated sewagem for non-household uses, it could save around 6 lakh a month.
According to a source from NEERI, the institute is mostly dependent on NMC water for most of its uses. The official said, “We have a rainwater harvesting system that contributes 20% of our requirement while we depend on municipal supply for the other 80%.”
NEERI acting director Tapas Nandy said, “Most of area in our campus is forested that does not require any watering. We use tap water just for watering the garden in front of our main administrative building. Apart from that there is a little bit of landscaping.” Nandy also said that watering a lot of trees in their premises they made use of fire hydrants. However, the hydrants draw upon NMC water only so it is basically potable water being used.
He said, “For our buildings, we have found alternative source of water supply but in the old buildings we cannot make any change. We have no option but to use tap water.”
Box
What A Waste!
People residing, working at NEERI: <1000
Max potable water NEERI should consume: 40.5L litres/month
Amount of water NEERI actually takes: 2.67cr litres/month
Excess water used by NEERI: 2.27cr litres/month
People who could benefit from this much water: 1.67 lakh
NEERI’s monthly water bill: 7.14L
Money that could be saved NEERI avoids using potable water: 6 lakh
Dependency on rainwater harvesting: 20%
Dependency on municipal supply: 80%