Growing environmental costs of urban water supplies

Growing urban water stress is one of the features of India's water crisis. Reducing per capita supplies and reliability, huge water wastages, growing inequity in access to water and its inefficient pricing across different classes are some of the problems (Mukherjee et al. 2010). Growing deprivation of the urban poor of water for basic survival needs is a remarkable dimension of the entire crisis, found in many cities of India and elsewhere in the developing world (UNDP 2006). This crisis has mainly stemmed from exponential growth in urban water demands, compounded by dwindling local sources of water and the increasing inability of urban water utilities to improve the water supply infrastructure (Tecco 2008).