They have different names for this type of water in Karachi. Popular was white gasoline, a spin-off from white gold. But it is the frontman of one of the gangs who actually manages to illustrate how heady profit can be in the underground water business:

“Once you’re hooked,” he said, “it will take you higher than powder.”

So it seems that Karachi’s groundwater is the liquor, the cocaine, the heroin. Once you enter the sales business, you will not be able to turn your back on profits.

Of course, this city of about 22 million people was supposed to get its official water supply from the Karachi Water & Wastewater Agency, but it is not. There is not enough water from the Indus River and whatever makes the KW & SB pipes half leak.

This is why people have started drilling or drilling water, sometimes as deep as 150 feet to reach the surface of the water. Some time ago, while trying to grapple with the Sindh drinking water crisis, the Supreme Court said you cannot get water from the ground. But as they say, each general prohibition creates its own liquor maker. The judge’s decision did not stop the water business. The advantage of boring is that you don’t have to bother setting up hydrants, or running a fleet of tankers. This seller did the simplest and smartest thing: they just bought a house near the water and vacuumed it.

This water is found in Karachi’s natural rainwater streams or small rivers which are generally not cemented. “There is boredom in every home,” said Sajjad in Liaquatabad. “They have been paid, Rs 500,000 per house. They are also paid monthly as this continues to work. “

The nullah flow with raw sewage but the water seeps down and is filtered by soil, rock and earth. So when pumped from a borehole, it is generally clear but not suitable for drinking. Hundreds of thousands of gallons are sold every day. And that water ends up in your glass and in your body.

Karachi’s largest industrial area, SITE, has hundreds of factories, mostly for water-hungry beverages and textiles. According to one estimate, they need 40 million gallons of water every day but KW&SB can only supply up to 2mgd. The remaining 38 mgd is provided by the illegal water supplier from Orangi nullah. “They pump water and then supply individual factories,” explains Khalid Mehmood Shaikh, who was recently assigned as MD. He knew exactly where the boredom was when he said he had done the survey.

The only problem is that KW&SB is stuck until it can actually supply its own factory. “If you act [on the boring]”We did it – the supply to the industry stopped,” he said. “This is Catch-22.”

There are proposals from Hubco to convert sewage to industrial grade water, but if it continues, it will still take two years for the treatment plant to be up and running. “The basic condition of the contract, once it is running, this illegal water supplier will be removed from here,” added the Sheikh. But what’s hard is that until that happens, KW&SB can’t cut this illegal supply.

For its part SITE just shrugged. “We are sourcing from subsoil suppliers and some factories have also grown tired of themselves,” said SITE chairman Abdul Hadi. “Up to 70% of our factories are textiles and beverages, all of which need water. Water is needed by every industry. ”

Ironically, in order to keep factories well supplied with water, SITE paid a high price. KW&SB sells the SITE for around 2mgd at Rs334 per thousand gallons. Then SITE sold it for Rs352 to the factory. But since this is not how much the factory needs, the rest has to come from the subsoil vendor.

They sell groundwater for Rs450 per thousand gallons. Because this water is very hard (1500 to 1600 total dissolved salts), the manufacturer has to run it through a reverse osmosis plant to reduce its hardness to 300 to 400 TDS. This raises costs. Processed groundwater ended up costing Rs700 per thousand gallons – almost double that.

There used to be only three or four people running the subsoil water business, but now it has grown to about 25. We tried to approach the frontman of one of the leaders, Shakeel Mahar, with the excuse of wanting to start a water business. Shakeel got into trouble with police for running two illegal water hydrants with the Taj Kohistani. The vocalist told us that Shakeel Mahar will provide the connection for 70% of the profits and the rest will be ours. But from that 30%, we have to pay 10% for labor. When we complained that this would get us nothing, he scoffed.

“My friend, 20% will leave you with more than you can imagine.”