The Hindu : Rainwater harvesting gets a boost

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 13, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Rainwater harvesting gets a boost

By Alladi Jayasri

BANGALORE Oct. 12. It took two decades for solar energy to find its place in the sun, and ordinary folks no longer find the idea of making the sun fulfil their energy needs laughable. Rainwater harvesting (RWH), though, is a different ball game altogether.

The promise of water wars dominating the new century is looming looming large even before the world settles to meet its challenges. RWH, a concept that has made a comeback from history as the answers to thirsty Bangalore's prayers, is being lapped up faster than one can spell R-A-I-N these days.

The good news is that, thanks to its terrain, geology, and the soil type, Bangalore City can meet over 40 per cent of its water needs through RWH. The great news is that rain in Bangalore is a stickler for punctuality, and can be relied upon to arrive, for 63 days (over eight months) in a year, between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., with "rhythmic discipline." The average rainfall is around 960 mm., the southwest monsoon accounting for 54 per cent of this.

The good news is that many industry campuses, institutions, private residences, and apartment blocks are already joining the club of proud rainwater harvesters. No less an institution than the Raj Bhavan is the latest entrant, where last week, the RWH facility was inspected by its resident, the Governor, T.N.Chaturvedi.

S.Vishwanath of Rainwater Club, who made it all happen, says that the potential of RWH on the 18-acre campus is seven crore litres annually. Raj Bhavan needs 2.5-crore litres. Mr. Vishwanath adapted the newly-built Glass House roof to harvest water, and Raj Bhavan spent Rs. 1.6 lakh on it. This means, Raj Bhavan meets 80 per cent of its needs from four borewells on the campus that will be recharged with rainwater and needs to depend on BWSSB only for drinking water.

At DENSO Kirloskar, he supervised the installation of RWH system comprising a checkdam, behind which are two open wells, which will be recharged with the water collected in the checkdam. This cost Rs. 60,000, and will mean 70 lakh litres of water in a good rainfall year.

Mr. Vishwanath has been offering consultancy on RWH to scores of people, and individuals. His own home in Vidyaranyapura is a demonstration of an ecosystem whose life springs from RWH. He says the virtues of RWH are manifold, and the trick is to keep RWH initiatives small, and decentralised. And of course, initiate all measures in a good rain year, which is the best way to tide over a bad one.

The reason is that there is nothing like rainwater to recharge the parched ground, where the water table has only been going down in Bangalore as in most other places where borewells and sumps have overexploited scarce groundwater. Studies have estimated that Bangalore has around 30,000 open wells, and there are over one lakh borewells.

He has responded to over 1,000 enquiries about the how and why of RWH, and gets clients from Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and from different parts of the State. And the self-effacing man that he is, Mr. Vishwanath is pleased to note that Chitradurga has its own Rainwater Club, started by an enthusiast there. The Rainwater Club can be contacted on 3641690 and 3642435. The website is www.rainwaterclub.org

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