Availability of Water in Shimla City (1990-2017)

Abstract

Shimla a hilly town is surrounded by snow-capped peaks and green patches. Shimla, at present the capital of Himachal Pradesh has untouched natural beauty and buzzing market places and is one of the most popular tourist destinations of India. As per one belief Shimla name has its name from the word ‘Shamla’ meaning a blue female which is another name for Goddess Kali. Being a tourist spot it has large number of restaurants and hotels. There are around 500 hotels in and around Shimla, there are many Government Guest Houses and private Guest Houses. The high influx of tourists and erratic nature of rainfall, leakage in pipelines have led to scarcity of water in the city. While the arrival of tourists, has pushed up the demand, the weak monsoon, leakage in the pipelines has lowered the water level at the source. There is a severe water shortage in the city and the taps in some areas of the city have gone without water supply for the past few days . The water shortage has been caused by a dry spell this year and the water supply for the city has nearly halved from 42 MLD to 23 MLD. Present paper is on shortage in the availability of water which is causing problems to the residents of Shimla city. The paper is based on secondary data. The population data and water data is obtained from government and non-government organisations of Shimla.