BANGALORE: One of the most popular residential localities in the city, the RT Nagar neighbourhood has set up a unique example for rest of the city, on how to put the community before themselves. Though the BWSSB (Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board) has made it mandatory for all homes to have RWH (Rain water Harvesting) systems, the residents of Rankanagar have gone beyond, by building 13 RWH recharge wells. They started it on an experimental basis by building six SWD (Storm Water Drain) recharge wells in September 2010 and later went on to build seven more next year. Each recharge well costed them about Rs 11,000.
The gated community has around 150 homes and is divided into two mains and three crosses. Vice-president of the Residents’ Association, G Dev Prasad said, “The bore well I had dug up for household purposes had dried up long ago, and it was lying unused. Problems relating to water scarcity is already grave in the city as bore wells are drying up everywhere. People are simply digging up bore wells without addressing the actual problem. This is a very dangerous trend. Two years ago after digging new borewells in our locality, water could be found only beyond 700 feet. We realised that there is an urgent need to recharge ground water”
The secretary of the Association, MM Nazim came up with the idea of RWH Recharge Well constructed directly on the Storm Water Drain. Nazim said, “At a meeting, I showed a simple plan on how to tap rainwater, recharge bore wells and raise the ground water level.” Pulakeshinagar MLA Prasanna Kumar was impressed with the futuristic approach and agreed to fund the project.
“One session on RWH by A R Shivakumar, Executive Secretary and Principal Investigator - RWH, KSCST (Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology), around a year back showed us how simple it was to tap rainwater. Shivkumar is himself a living example,” said Vaziruddin M, President of the Association. Shivkumar has adopted water and energy saving techniques in his home ‘Sourabha’. There are two methods of RWH. One is through Ground water recharge through recharge pits, soak pits, bore wells. Other than building recharge wells, you can also collect, filter and store rainwater that falls on rooftops of houses, commercial complexes. In this method, rainwater can be stored for direct use in underground overhead tanks.
Our city which is growing at a rapid rate has an urgent need for restoring ground water reserves and this approach of Community rainwater harvesting wells will set a good trend in the coming days.