The reluctance of the public to abide by the Rainwater Harvesting Act, despite many revised deadlines, has changed. A waterless summer and rainless July did what the BWSSB could not achieve with its campaigns and warnings. Now, 42,000 out of 56,000 buildings across the city have installed the water conservation system.
The BWSSB had identified 56,000 buildings (private and government) that had to install RWH by December 31, 2011. By his date, only 57 per cent had complied. Of the 2,553 government (state and union) buildings identified, less than 500 had installed the system. And only 30,500 private buildings out of the 53,500 identified, had complied. The BWSSB threatened to cut water and sanitary connections of defaulters, but there were just too many of them. So BWSSB extended the deadline to March 31 if consumers gave a letter committing to installing the RWH system by then.
No one gave the required letter and only 5,000 consumers orally agreed to install the system. That is how matters stood till acute shortage of water, extending this year to July, hit the city and tamed the recalcitrant public. “We would not receive water for many days in a row and this happened too often. Tired of this, we consulted some neighbours and all of us in our neighbourhood decided to install RWH systems on the rooftops of our houses. We contacted the BWSSB local officials and they helped us get in touch with trained plumbers who installed the system for us,” said Ramya Krishnan, a resident of Jayamahal Extension.
“We are hoping that for good rains this year and it (the RWH system) will bail us out of the water crisis that we have been witnessing since March,” said D. Shankarmurthy, a resident of Arekere, who installed the RWH in July.