HYDERABAD: The city witnessed moderate to heavy showers on Monday, which left traffic crawling in some areas due to water logging, however, residents of a few colonies made the most of the monsoon spell.
One such group of citizens are from Madhapur’s Fortune Towers apartment, who inaugurated their rooftop Rainwater Harvesting (RWH)system with Monday’s rain. This after the resident welfare community linked the rooftops of the four buildings to four defunct borewells in their 256 home complex. “We have 6 borewells in total. Since they are all covered with concrete and have no scope of recharge, four of the six had gone dry about six years ago and we were dependent on the other two,” noted Praveen Kumar M, a resident and architect who oversaw the project. They can now save one lakh litres of water every year, per building, making the buildings self-sufficient.
In a similar initiative, a gated community near BHEL, Pranith Pranav Homes built, four 30-feet deep RWH pits in their area in a bid to recharge their borewells. “We have over five borewells in our 16 acre colony which supply water as we have no municipality connections,” said Pavan Kumar Bandaru, a software engineer and resident of the area. In this project, they linked over 300 villas’ rooftop rainwater collection to one common pipe, which is then diverted equally to each of the RWH pits.
“We undertook it at a cost of RS 1.5-2 lakh. We will reap the benefits of the same next summer and won’t have to hire water tankers,” added Pavan. Meanwhile, for the several defunct borewells in the city, Praveen suggested that they must be first checked to see if they are still intact or have collapsed.