The demand for drinking water in Nepal has been rising remarkably every year with an increase in urban population. As the sources of water seem to be drying up due to climate change and other human activities, people are grappling with a chronic shortage of water in most of the urban areas of the country. The daily demand for drinking water in the Kathmandu Valley has now risen to about 360 million litres. But the supply is less than 76 million litres a day in dry season while it is around 123 million litres in the rainy season. The valley residents had heaved a great sigh of relief after the inauguration of the first phase of the Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) some months back. The project that aims to supply 170 million litres of drinking water daily to the valley was bringing in about 80 million litres of water every day. Under its second phase, the project plans to supply extra 170 million litres daily each from the Yangri and Larke rivers.

But unfortunately, the national pride project has stopped supplying water as the floods in the Melamchi River caused huge damage to it a couple of weeks ago. The floods, triggered by torrential rains, brought mudflow and buried the headwork site of this vital project at Ambathan area near Melamchi. The government has already mobilised technical teams to work on resuming the supply of water as soon as possible. But it may take some months for the project to clear the debris and restart water supply. So, the parched valley residents are reeling from the scarcity of drinking water again.

There is no denying the fact that rainwater harvesting may be a viable option for the Kathmanduites as well as those living in other urban areas of Nepal to meet their needs. Rainwater harvesting is the collection and utilisation of the rainwater from the rooftops as well as other surfaces. This water can be used instantly or in the future. The process of collecting rainwater is not so difficult. It can be done either by storing the water in tanks or recharging it into ground sources like wells and tube-wells. Water engineers call on the urban people to switch towards harvesting rainwater to solve their water scarcity. They also advise one and all to install rainwater harvesting systems in their homes and offices to remain free from this problem.

As part of exploring ways to harvesting rainwater, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) and Smart WASH Solutions (SWS), the other day, organised a webinar to deliberate on rainwater harvesting in the urban areas. Speaking at the webinar, water experts from Nepal and different countries said that the collection of rainwater could not only help address the growing shortage of drinking water in the urban areas but also tackle droughts in summer and floods in monsoon. In Nepal, governments seem to have spent lots of money for installing piped water and utilising underground water. But they have not paid any attention towards harvesting freely available rainwater. It is high time that they explored this option to seek a sustainable solution to the perennial water crisis in the urban areas.