Water demand of Kathmandu valley

Kathmandu Valley constitutes of three districts; Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Nepal, the population of the valley grew from
1.64 million in 2011 to 2.42 million in 2011. Kathmandu Valley is the most populated urban
region and one of the fastest-growing urban agglomerations in South Asia (Muzzini &
Apericio, 2013; MoUD, 2015). Kathmandu Valley accounts for 24 per cent of the total urban
population, with Kathmandu Metropolitan City alone accounting for 9.7 per cent (MoUD,
2015) .Now, KUKL is supplying water only to limited number of areas due to various seen
and unseen issues. As in 2016, Kathmandu Metropolitan city, Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan city
and municipalities like Madhyapur Thimi, Bhaktapur and Kirtipur have more water demand
than other new municipalities due to densely populated and use of fully flushing latrine
facilities connected to the public sewage system.

Table: Population projection of three districts of Kathmandu Valley (Source: CBS, 2014)

Year 2011 2016 2021 2026 2031

Lalitpur
468132 525211 585982 635151 680157
district
Bhaktapur
304651 340066 377660 408473 436553
district
Kathmandu
1744240 2011978 2300890 2522103 2729056
district
Total 2517023 2877255 3264532 3565727 3845766
Note: Population projection is done on medium variant for these districts. The Medium
variant represents plausible decline in fertility and mortality levels along with appropriate
effects of migration levels which will give the most likely estimates of population size (CBS,
2014).

Assuming a uniform demand of 135 lpcd, then the total demand in the valley becomes 387.45
millions litres per day (MLD), which is projected to reach 440.1 MLD by 2021. Although,
National Building Code has stated the required amount of water as 100 lpcd, KUKL use 135
lpcd which is average for commercial /institutional and domestic purposes for Kathmandu
Valley. KUKL includes 20% leakage while estimating demand but these figures do not
include the physical losses through distribution networks.

Table: Estimated water demand in the Kathmandu Valley by using 135 lpcd

Year 2001 2011 2016 2021 2026 2031

Kathmandu valley
population ( in 1.64 2.51 2.87 3.26 3.56 3.84
millions)
Water demand in the
221.4 338.85 387.45 440.1 480.6 518.4
valley (MLD)
Figure: KUKL service area (Source KUKL, 2015)

KUKL has estimated as the present water demand as 370 MLD in both dry and wet
seasons(Annual Report ,KUKL,2015).But ,KUKL produces only 86 MLD in dry season and
144 MLD in wet season.

Figure: KUKL service areas showing branch areas