VISAKHAPATNAM : The department of Civil Engineering of Andhra University has undertaken a three-year project to conduct research in groundwater dynamics on the varsity campus. In the first-of-its-kind project, the researchers have dug up 211 recharge rainwater pits in 62 buildings and five piezometric wells on the campus.
Around 83 million litres of water is percolated into the soil every year on the campus, says principal investigator GVR Srinivasa Rao.
The Rs 1.5-crore project is sponsored by the department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, and the AU.
The department has plans to ink an MoU with Groundwater department, government of India, to link the information available to everyone.
The project takes 488 acres of AU campus which has typical topographic features to study recharge, discharge and storage of groundwater. The investigators have taken about 10 colonies, including Balaji Nagar, Maddilapalem, Pithapuram Colony, Kirlampudi Layout and Pandurangapuram as experimenting zone, where rainwater spreads from the AU campus.
“Initially, 62 buildings in about 85,000 sqm area are connected to rainwater harvesting pits under two metres depth. Also the natural chain drains were arrested with construction of check dams to store the rainwater,” said Srinivasa Rao.
The team also conducted resistivity study by taking soil samples at every 10 feet depth. The piezometric wells were constructed in about five areas on the campus. They were dug up to 300 metres. These wells are connected to automatic water level recorder by which hourly water fluctuation levels are recorded through a software.
“We take samples of water to analyse quality of groundwater on a regular basis and using software we analysed the parameters causing changes in groundwater.
With about 3-4 lakh people living in the surrounding areas, this kind of system will help to enrich the groundwater table with rechargeable activity.
Through this project, we are trying to establish a mathematical model which can be applied in other areas to increase groundwater,” the principal investigator told the Express. Besides, the team has invited NGOs and students to learn to adopt similar methods outside.
“Generally, we find rainwater harvesting pits developed by households without the knowledge of soil and location properties. In a few cases, people did not provide pipeline which will allow rainwater from surrounding areas to fall in the pit. Rainfall intensity and infiltration should be equal, which depends on the soil quality and the area one chooses,” said co-investigator Y Abbulu.