This manual has been developed by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO), a department under the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and  serves as a standard guide in public health engineering by providing a code of day to day practice for public health engineers to follow.

The population of India is likely to be around a thousand million by the end of the century, with the urban population being around four hundred million by that time. This puts a great demand on the civic amenities including water supply for domestic purposes as well as that required for irrigation, industry, which has to keep pace with the increasing demands of the rising population.

Thus, identification of newer sources of water, their conservation and optimal utilisation are very important. The present scale of water supply in urban areas continues to be inadequate and many sections of the population lack access to piped and  safe water supply. Very few  metropoliton cities can boast of having access to safe, regular and adequate water supply to meet their growing water demands.

A number of factors are involved in tackling the problem of provision of protected water supply to all communities at minimum cost and in the shortest possible time. Emphasis has to be laid on both the aspects of the system namely, planning and management, both technical and financial. At present, decisions, both at the policy level and the technical level are based on emperical considerations and divergent practices that are in vogue in the country as far as the designing of the system is concerned.

The manual aims at unification of these practices and attempts at inculcating a rationale to the policy and managerial decisions, apart from giving guidence to public health engineers in achieving the target of providing safe water to all communities economically and expeditiously.

The manual discusses principles such as planning, identification of the source of water supply, development and transmission, water treatment, distribution system, testing and other related administrative aspects and also explains the approach to deal with each problem in detail.

The manual has been revised from time to time and has taken into account the recent technical advances and trends in the development of protected water supply systems, some of the major changes and additions as highlighted in the following areas:

• Groundwater extraction through radial wells
• Measurement of flow
• Minimum requirements for domestic, non-domestic, institutional, fire fighting and industrial needs
• Minimum residual pressure and quality standards including virological aspects
• Concept of unit operations
• Chemical handling and feeding
• Recent concepts of coagulation and flocculation
• Advances in filtration
• Operation and maintanance problems in various unit operations involved in water supply, from source development to the actual supply
• Pumping stations and equipment
• Hydraulic network analysis, direct design of networks and computer programming
• Preventive maintenance including detection and prevention of wastage
• Protection against pollution and freezing
• Corrosion and its prevention
• Water hammer problems
• House service connections
• Optimal designs of water treatment systems
• Instrumentation and controls in water treatment plants
• Financing and management
• Legal aspects
• Laboratory tests and proceedures with special reference to the classification of the water works laboratories

The manual has been divided into the following chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Planning
3. Project report
4. Measurement of flow
5. Sources of supply
6. Transmission of water
7. Water treatment
8. Disinfection
9. Specific treatment processes
10. Distribution system
11. Pumping stations and machinery
12. Instrumentation and controls in water treatment plans
13. Operation and maintenance of waterworks
14. Water works management
15. Laboratory tests and proceedures
16. Computer aided optimal design of water treatment system
17. Financial management of water supply projects
18. Legal aspects

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