BWSSB to bottle potable treated water soon
Still at a primitive stage, the Board is already exploring the option to set up a plant at its Vrishabhavathi Valley (V valley) tertiary treatment plant, which currently treats 60 MLD (million litres of water per day).
A Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board official said the Board was planning to start manufacturing bottled water and supply them to government sponsored functions in place of bottled water from private companies. The plan is not just to have an indigenous government product to be used at the government events, but also to introduce the idea of reusing treated water for potable purposes. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board wants to advertise its bottled water the way it is done in Singapore, where the leaders largely consume treated water at public functions. This bottled water will also be available to the general public at a reasonable price, the official added.
The V Valley treatment plant on Mysore Road is of 180 MLD capacity. Of the 60 MLD treated at the tertiary level, only five MLD is supplied to various industries for non-potable purposes. Treated water is supplied to Bengaluru International Airport, Bharat Electronics Limited, Rail Wheel Factory, Arvind Mills Limited and to the Defence.
The official said the existing V Valley tertiary treatment plant with trickling filters removes most of the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). However for the water to be potable, the COD and BOD levels should record zero during testing.
The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board is planning to procure a reverse osmosis (RO) plant with ultra-violet radiation and the capacity to treat 1.5 to 2 mld. The cost would be around Rs 2.2 crore per million litres of water and the estimated cost for the plant including the bottling process would be less than Rs five crore.
The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board has already prepared a DPR (detail project report) and is in the process of calling Reference for Application (RFA) for tenders.