A water conscious city

Since 1978, the people of Fukuoka city in northern Kyushu, an island located south west of Japan are not only harvesting rain but are also consuming the limited resources intelligently. As a result, they have not faced any major water stress.

In 1978, a severe drought in this fourth largest commercial city of Japan compelled the authorities to suspend the city’s water supply for 12 hours daily continuously for about 278 days. There were some areas in the city that had no water at all. These hardships taught them an invaluable lesson. They realised that water is a precious commodity to be used judiciously. It strengthened their resolve to conserve water. Some of their initiatives are:

Enhancing the water reserves by pumping water from swollen rivers particularly, during the periods of heavy rainfall;
Upgrading old water pipes;
In 1981, the water distribution system was successfully upgraded to control leakages, which is 4.9 per cent – lowest in the country. The technique used is simple. They are using remote controlled valves to adjust the volume and pressure of water that minimises the rate of water leakage during distribution.
Wastewater and runoff is reused by every building;
‘Water saving toilets’ using 5 litres less water than regular toilets are being popularised by the authorities. About 500,000 such facilities are installed in the city.

In 1994, the city received an annual rainfall of 891 mm, which was much less than the 1,138 mm of rainfall during the drought year of 1978. However, people’s active and sustained conservation efforts reduced the adverse impact of drought. The water supply was suspended for only eight hours daily and, every household was supplied with tapped water. Conservation has become a habit among the people. According to an estimate, about 97.5 per cent of people are aware of the need to conserve water, whereas 72 per cent of them are actually conserving water. The per day per capita consumption of water is today less than what it was in 1978. Moreover, at 311 liters/day of water consumption, Fukuoka compares favourably with the average 404 litres / day of other Japanese cities. The people and the city authorities have set up a ‘Fukuoka city forest and water resource foundation’, which receives one yen from the people for every cubic meter of water that they consume.

Water scarcities are human made and only humans have the power to get rid of them forever, by any society, just like the people of Fukuoka.

Source:
World Water, volume 24 (4), pp 18