World Water Day today: Online moots to raise awareness about “Valuing Water”

LAHORE: Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) has planned to celebrate World Water Day on Monday (today) by creating awareness among the masses about the importance of water.

World Water Day is celebrated on March 22 every year and theme of World Water Day 2021 is valuing water. Wasa Lahore is the core body which handles all the fresh water in the city.

Every year Wasa carried out a walk to celebrate World Water Day but this year the walk will not be held due to spread of coronavirus. However, the agency planned online conferences and lectures to raise awareness about “Valuing Water”, the theme of World Water Day 2021.

Talking about this year’s theme of World Water Day, Managing Director Wasa Syed Zahid Aziz said the value of water was much more than its price. He said value of water was enormous.

“Water has value for our households, food, culture, health, education, economics and the integrity of our natural environment,” he said, adding, “If we overlook any of these values, we risk losing this irreplaceable resource.”

Without a comprehensive understanding of water’s true value in our lives, we will be unable to safeguard this critical resource for the benefit of everyone as well as for our future generations, the MD said.

He said Wasa has taken several steps to preserve the precious recourse. Giving examples, he said construction of an underground rainwater storage tank in the provincial metropolis was the best milestone achieved by Wasa during the year 2020. He said by saving rainwater, “We will be able to fulfill our gardening needs and the innovative project of Wasa was appreciated very much across the country and many big cities were replicating this project.”

“During the last monsoon, the underground water reservoir constructed at Lawrence Road proved its utility by storing 15 lakh gallons of rainwater, which was later used by Parks and horticulture Authority (PHA) for watering green belts. This stored water was also used to extinguish heavy fire, which broke at Hafeez Center,” he said.

The managing director said that another initiative taken by Wasa was to introduce a project under which ablution area of over 100 mosques adjacent to parks in various localities was redesigned and the water used for ablution was later utilised for gardening purposes.

In a bid to save underground water of the provincial metropolis, Wasa has planned a surface water treatment plant, which will convert surface water into clean drinking water, which will be added in the Wasa’s system.

He said the agency also introduced mobile water testing labs, which were sent to different city localities on daily basis to check the quality of tap water. It is pertinent to mention here that the water samples collected by these mobile labs from remotest city localities were found fit for human consumption, he claimed.

To save unnecessary use of water as well as resources, Wasa has also launched a project of automating several tube-wells by constructing a computer operated monitoring and operating system with the help of PITB, he maintained, adding under this system, the connected tube-wells will automatically start and switched off at a given time. This will save unnecessary use of water as well as resources like electricity, said Syed Zahid Aziz.

To save the underground water for our future generations, the agency will continue to plan new and innovative projects for the city, he added.