THESIS ABSTRACT

Abstract

Despite of high gap between the demand and supply Lalitpur district is experiencing a huge water crisis, due to high water losses in the distribution system. The water demand is increasing day to day with the rapid urbanization and development of new built-up areas outside the core city. High leakage in the water main, unauthorized connection and lack of pressure management in supply are the major causes of water loss. The Lalitpur branch has the lowest revenue per connection among the other branch of KUKL which, encourage me to conduct research in the Lalitpur District. The study focused on the assessment of Non-Revenue water of the Lalitpur distribution system under Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited, Lalitpur branch office. The main objective of the study is to determine the current NRW level, major causes, and challenges to reducing Non-Revenue Water (NRW), assess the physical condition of the water supply scheme including functionality and sustainability, and determine the strategy to minimize NRW in the Lalitpur distribution system. Some of the study’s major findings of the study are; assessment of Non-Revenue water was done by quantitative analysis.WB-EasyCalc version 6.17 water balance software is used to determine the component of Non-Revenue water. Non-Revenue water for the Lalitpur distribution system is 3245672 m3 (46.30% of system input volume) where among which 678515 m3 (20.92% of water losses) is commercial loss and 2565793 m3 (79.08% of water losses) is Physical losses. The major cause of non-revenue water is obtained by key informant interviews. Key Informant Interview was done with the chairman of the KUKL board of director, former KUKL MD, former KUKL GM, current CEO, DCEO, deputy manager and department head, division head, branch manager, and engineer working more than 5 years related to NRW of Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited. Obtained responses from the key informant are analyzed by content analysis. The major causes of non-revenue water from the study are; aging infrastructure, unauthorized connection, poor meter management and vii meter reading practice, poor database, and data handling system, third-party damage, poor operation and maintenance, low staff motivation, organization culture, lack of quality control, intermittent water supply and customer dissatisfaction. Major challenges of reducing non-Revenue water are: aged and haphazard distribution network, human resource capacity and employee competence, budget constraint, lack of updated as-built drawing, low level of metering, improper customer data, and backward in technology, poor coordination among line agencies, the gap between demand and supply, old connection policies and high human resource turnover. Some of the major findings of the study are; the condition of the water supply scheme of the Lalitpur distribution system was obtained by measuring functionality and sustainability score. The functionality and sustainability score and its measurement of the scheme are obtained based on the monitoring and evaluation framework of DWSS. The functionality score of the Lalitpur distribution system is found to be 43.14 and the sustainability score is found to be 44.05. The physical condition of the structure shows that the water supply scheme is at high risk for functionality as well as sustainability. . The possible strategy to minimize the Non-Revenue water is obtained through key informant interviews. The obtained result is analyzed by using content analysis. The possible strategy to minimize non-revenue water is; Installation of bulk metering and smart meter reading, water main Replacement with establishing DMA, personnel capacity enhancement, active leakage control, NRW benchmarking and water audit, institutional capacity development, GIS database, and asset management, the budgetary provision in NRW, pressure management, detect and eliminate illegal connection.

Keywords

Leakage, Non-Revenue Water, Functionality, Sustainability, Water balance, KUKL.