Using Water for Transporting Water

The government of Tamil Nadu looked at Chennai water train carrying 2.5 million litres of water for its parched residents. On the other side, heavy rains are battering Karnataka and Kerala, taking many lives and causing more misery. As climate change is rapidly-intensifying, one man’s drought could well coincide with another man’s deluge.

But it would be far-fetched to use the ‘water train’ model widely to transport water from areas with a surplus to parched lands. Also owing to the fact that it is expensive to ferry water through thousands of kilometres of pipelines and against gradients which often involves pumping stations requiring a lot of energy, the piped water transport doesn’t seem economically feasible.

Water over Water

French engineers were advocating plans to help water-starved African nations by hauling icebergs to their shores. Greece has used the mega Spragg trash bag and its ‘world’s strongest zipper’ to haul massive amounts of water.

India can inspire from these novel ideas to use water to transport water which has been implemented with success in the Caribbean, especially during the drought of 1983-84 in Antigua.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantages of transporting water over water include the fact that:

• One Horsepower of energy can move 150 kg on-road, 500 kg on-rail and 4,000 kg on water.
• Similarly, one litre of fuel can move 24 tonnes per km on-road, 85 tonnes on-rail and 105 tonnes on inland water transport.

The disadvantages are that:

• The loading and unloading facilities are expensive to construct.
• In India, most rivers don’t have the depth and breadth to accommodate large barges all through the year. This would require the dredging of rivers, which is exorbitant and might even destroy natural ecosystems.

Even though India has recently forged ahead with its inland waterways development plans by investing in the National Waterways in the Northeast, the bigger problem is that there are too few large industries are located near river belts. As a result, the impetus for investment simply doesn’t exist.

Need for Innovations

India is a country of contrasts on one side the animals were frantically trying to save themselves from floodwaters in Kaziranga National Park while, at the same time, children were carrying back-breaking quantities of water in the blistering Chennai sun owing to the water crisis haunting the city. Hence it is time to consider out-of-the-box technological innovations.

Exciting and path-breaking innovations in technology and enterprise have potential to solve India’s resource problems. Desilting of lakes and rivers (concomitant with effective garbage/plastic disposal); extensive, state-mandated rainwater harvesting; desalination and, finally, recycling of water all these can make a considerable difference through technological innovations which address the current shortcomings.