HYDERABAD: Rainwater Harvesting(RWH) is an age-old technique to conserve freshwater that you often read about, even in school textbooks. However, this simple technique of groundwater recharge continues to receive short shrift from the state government and residents of Hyderabad. Two years back, the Municipal Administration and Urban Development department released a Government Order (GO) to constitute a seven-member committee that will monitor the compliance of an earlier GO MS 350.
Now, MS 350 was released in the year 2000 by the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh government. It made having a rainwater harvesting system compulsory for every household. RWH was mandatory even to apply and obtain building permits. But, the 7-member panel was only formed after the Hyderabad High Court issued a directive to the State government to do so. The court had also directed the committee to present an action plan for implementation of the GO. The panel made an action plan and submitted the same to the court.
However, apart from convening a meeting of all members of the committee in July 2016 and conducting of a few awareness programmes, not much has been done in the areas of monitoring and enforcement. Earlier, the Hyderabad Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) used to provide financial subsidy to public for the construction of RWH pits. Now, that has also been stopped. “Although the implementation of the subsidy scheme was far from being perfect, it did encourage people to take up construction of harvesting structures,” says BT Srinivasan of the United Federation of Resident Welfare Associations.
“The water board itself had promised to construct about 10,000 harvesting pits across the city. But, it managed to build only a mere 3,000,” he adds. But, officials continue to claim there are penalties that deter people who ignore rain water harvesting. “For new constructions, the GHMC does not give occupancy certificate unless the RWH pit is constructed,” says J Satyanarayana, officer on special duty with the water board. “Also, the water board levies 3-4 times the actual cost as penalty for providing water connections to houses without harvesting systems,” said Satyanarayana. He claims, “In the case of old houses, officials and our NGO partners visit them occasionally and sensitise them on the importance of the system.”
What can you do?
Construction of RWH structures costs just about `5,000-6,000 and the process does not take time as one RWH pit can be constructed in a day. HMWS&SB website also has a list of trained contractors and their contacts and water board also provides technical help. If you are living in a colony or are member of a resident welfare association, you can construct RWH structures using geomembrane and injection wells, which is basically sinking a pipe deep into the earth in an RWH pit, so that the rainwater gets recharges the aquifer directly. Such structures have been tested and proven to be successful in effective recharge of groundwater at JNTU-Hyderabad campus. Dr MVSS Giridhar of Center for Water Resources, JNTU-H says one structure in a 10-acre area can help recharge 3 crore litres of groundwater.