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When a concept succeeds
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Pammal is one of the few areas in and around Chennai, where the residents seem to have woken up to the benefits of rain water harvesting. A report.
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RWH sturcture leading to a well.
PAMMAL IS neither here nor there. Though seemingly within the city limits, it is in Kancheepuram district. The suburb was in the news some years ago, when residents protested against the noise caused by aircraft take-off and landing. But it lies below the flight corridor — the zone the aircraft must use to land from west to east or to take off from east to west.
There cannot be any respite unless the airport and runways are shifted to a place far from habitation. But that is unlikely.
The noise-rattled Pammal with its maddening road surface — so bad is its main road that one was reminded of kutcha pathways through reserve forests — seems to have cornered a share of glory.
It is one of the few areas in and around Chennai where rainwater is harvested consistently, and where the residents seem to have woken up to the benefits of RWH.
Mangalam Balasubramanian.
Pammal stands alone as a proof that nothing sensible will work in this State or this metropolis unless the concept is backed by rigid laws to implement it.
Mangalam Balasubramanian, an adviser for Danida, has been promoting waste segregation, recycling, and sewage treatment and has successfully desilted the 5.5-acre Surya Amman Koil tank on Anna Salai, Pammal, with donations from almost every family, not refusing even a rupee from some. But the cost — Rs.12 lakhs — of desilting and deepening the tank by five metres was met entirely through donations, a big chunk of which seems to have come from large industrial units in the area, including some major polluters of the ground water resource.
Ms. Balasubramanian was enthused by RWH and took it up in January, 2001, in her own inimitable way — through a house-to-house campaign. And in the past year, more than 50 households have installed the system. The cost ranges from Rs.700 (in the house of Indra Kumar, a mechanical engineer, who is a proponent of RWH) to Rs.8,000, with most houses spending no more than Rs.4,000 for the permanent structure.
The scope for improvisation is endless and people had come up with their own ingenious alterations. Some of these were impressive while others seemed to have inherent flaws, but each bit was sure to work.
As a housewife said, ``I was unsure about RWH despite Ms. Balasubramanian's assurance. But after the rain last year, I have no doubts.
The water used to turn yellow if left exposed to the air for sometime (because of iron salts) but no more. The taste has improved.'' A sample from the well corroborated her claim.
Cost-effective RWH structure.
Mr. Indra Kumar and Ms. Balasubramanian said that tanning factories were a major problem. The effluents affected the ground water quality. ``But RWH has helped, and the water stinks much less than it used to earlier,'' they said.
An elderly man had done RWH in his house for Rs.4,000 — with parallel downlet pipes emptying into a single feeder pipe that led to the filtration bed linked to an open well. He said, ``The result has been amazing.''
Shree Sankaran Nagar in Pammal falls in ward number 1. There are 250 families living there, and of them, 50 have implemented RWH. But there are 43 ``nagars'' in Pammal. So the ``success'' as a percentage of the total number of households in the area is small. If the number of families which have implemented the system impresses you, stick to the ``more than 50'' as a proof of RWH's potential.
Hopefully, it will motivate you to implement a similar system in your house.
A Pammal resident in whose house RWH was implemented.
But if the insignificant penetration rate of RWH in the community bothers you, you will agree that there is no option but to have a law to force everyone in Tamil Nadu to implement RWH. That alone can work. And immediately.
GOUTAM GHOSH
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