Planners were perturbed enough when Kathmandu Valley´s population growth rate was thought to be 4.8 per cent a year. Recently released data shows that the figure is more than 5 per cent. This means that every year, about 23,000 new residents make demands on the Valley´s services and extremely limited resource base. Both land and water are limited in Kathmandu Valley, but it seems likely that we will run out of water before we run out of land.
The limits to Kathmandu´s growth in terms of the availability of drinking water were set millions of years ago by evolving Himalayan geology. Kathmandu is a "hanging valley" far above the snow- fed abundance of the Indrawatt and Trisuli rivers on the east and west, which flow 750 m and 1,000 m below the Valley floor. The Valley´s own Bagmati River and its tributaries rise in the surrounding hills and are spring-fed.
If the Valley´s rivers provide but a trickle, the amount of money that has been pumped into its water supply system may be likened to a flood. And it is not for want of spending that Kathmandu´s water supply remains poor and erratic. The Nepal Water Supply Corporation (NWSC) is well into its fourth credit package from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank affiliate that provides soft loans to developing countries. A total of NRs 1 billion has been digested since IDA first opened its purse strings, and the most recently sanctioned ban is for "network rehabilitation" and is worth U$ 60 million. Due to extraordinary ineptness in their implementation, none of the earlier loan programmes met their targets.
It was not always so, says Rabindra Man Shrestha. an engineer who was with the Corporation in the early 1970s, before the IDA largesse was showered on the NWSC. "We did not have much money then, and the approach was hands-on, and the goal was to improve water quality. Every visible leak used to be checked and repaired, and we learnt a lot about the water supply." It is Shrestha´s view, shared by many other engineers and managers, that the Corporation allowed its own institutional experience to lapse when the big money arrived.