BIS Draft Standard for Drinking Water

BIS Draft Standard for Drinking Water

Recently, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has prepared a draft standard for the supply system of piped drinking water.

The draft has been titled as ‘Drinking water supply quality management system — requirements for piped drinking water supply service’.

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)

1. BIS Act, 2016 established BIS as a statutory and National Standards Body. It replaces Indian Standards Institution set up in 1947.
2. It has enabling provisions for the Govt to bring under compulsory certification regime any goods or article of any scheduled industry, process, system or service which it considers necessary for public interest or for protection of human, animal or plant health, safety of environment, or prevention of unfair trade practices or national security.
3. It has also made hallmarking of precious metals mandatory.
4. The new Act, also allows multiple type of simplified comformity assessment schemes like self declaration of conformity against a standard which will give simplified options to manufacturers to adhere to the rules.
5. Center can appoint any authority in addition to BIS to verify the conformity of products and services to a standard and issue certificate.

Features of the Draft BIS Standards

• It has been prepared by the BIS’s Public Drinking Water Supply Services Sectional Committee.
• The draft has been developed keeping in view the Centre’s Jal Jeevan Mission which aims for providing safe and adequate drinking water to all rural households by 2024 through tap connections.
• The draft outlines the process of water supply, from raw water sources to household taps.
• The draft standard is expected to make the process of piped water supply more uniform, especially in rural and underdeveloped areas of the country where the system runs on various government orders and circulars.
• It outlines the requirements for a water supplier or a water utility on how they should establish, operate, maintain and improve their piped drinking water supply service.
• Guidelines for top management of the water supplier/utility which includes:
• Accountability and customer focus.
• Establishing a quality policy for their service.
• Monitoring the quality of water released to people.
• Conducting a water audit.
• It sets the Indian Standard (IS) 10500 for the treated water for drinking (PT). The IS 10500 outlines the acceptable limit of heavy metals such as arsenic, pH value of water, turbidity, the total dissolved solids in it, and the colour and odour.
• Adoption of the concept of District Metering Area (DMA) where possible. DMA is a concept for controlling leakages in the water network, which is essentially divided into a number of sectors, called the DMAs, and where flow meters are installed to detect leaks.
• The water supplier may provide bulk water meters in the water distribution system to ensure water audit, however the provisions should be made for domestic meters also.
• The water supplier shall ensure that the consumers do not have direct access to the meters to avoid possible tampering of the meters.
• The draft also mentions that water should be sampled at the treatment plant every four hours against quality parameters.

Jal Jeevan Mission

1. It envisages supply of 55 litres water per person per day to every rural household through Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024.
2. The Jal Shakti Ministry is the nodal ministry for the implementation of the mission.
3. It focuses on integrated demand and supply side management of water at the local level.
4. Creation of local infratructure as mandatory elements like rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge and reuse of household water to be undertaken.
5. Mission is based on community approach to water and includes Information, Education and Communication as key component of the mission.
6. JJM looks to create a Jal Andolan to make water everyone's priority.
7. Funding: It is a Centrally Sponsored Schemes. 50:50 for States; 90:10 for Himalayan and Northeast States and 100% for UTs.
8. Operational guidelines: 4 level structure
   1. National Jal Jeevan Mission (NJJM) at the Central level
   2. State Water and Sanitation Mission (SWSM) at the State level
   3. District Water and Sanitation Mission (DWSM) at the District level
   4. Village Water Sanitation Committee (VWSC) at Village level
9. Every village will prepare Village Action Plan which will have 3 components: Water source and its maintenance; Water supply and Greywater management.

Source: IE