Rainwater harvesting with a difference

           It was raining the whole night. When I got up to open the main gate in my independent home at 4 am, I found the house surrounded by more than ankle deep water. I was worried that if the rain continued for a few more hours, water would enter my home as it had happened in the past.  Fortunately, when I came out at 6.30am the rain had stopped. There was only a slight drizzle. By 9.30 am all the water had drained out leaving behind  only the garbage which had floated  into the compound from the road which is at a slightly higher level than my home. 
 

 It was not so a few years ago when  even a couple of hours  of heavy rain would result water collecting and remaining  stagnant  around the house  for a few days . What has made the difference? Implementation of a simple  rain water harvesting idea  suggested by my   Engineer /Contractor friend who has been looking after all construction related activities in my home. 

Though we had implemented the traditional RWH system when I built the first floor of my house long ago, it had not made any difference to charging my open well  which had remained bone dry for almost a decade. This was before the RWH was made compulsory for every household  by  the AIADMK government in 1990s.  After the implementation of the scheme by all our neighbours, I  found the  open well getting recharged and we could start using its water even for our cooking and drinking needs.But the implementation of the new idea by my contractor friend has not only helped increase the water level in the well to its maximum potential ( water is now available at 10ft) at the end of the rainy season  but has also helped in getting the water collected around the house after a heavy rain drained out fast in a couple of hours   instead of the water stagnating for a few days.  

 

The idea given by the contractor  involved digging   holes on the concrete flooring surrounding the house and also on the long passage leading to our home. The holes were dug  every  six ft, covering the entire length and breadth of the concrete flooring.  PVC pipes,  2 meters  in length and 6’” in diameter were embedded in these  holes and filled up with gravel & sand. The top was kept open providing an opportunity for the collected water to percolate down to the earth. This simple procedure costing me a few thousand rupees has made a difference to our efforts in solving the water stagnating problem. The only maintenance required  is to clear any muck collected on top of the holes once a year, before the main monsoon season. 

Thanks to the availability of water through bore well which we had installed  three  decades ago and the clean water from the open well, we find that  we are not dependent on  the Corporation water at all. In fact,  we have temporarily  closed the connection discharging  water into our sump. In any case the water supply from the Corporation had always been erratic and not dependable forcing us to buy tanker water during emergencies in the past.

If similar systems are implemented by all the independent homes and apartment complexes  with concrete floorings  surrounding their homes , it should greatly  help in mitigating their  water related problems. The corporation could also consider implementing similar ideas , suitably modified to suit the ground realities, on  all the roads of the city.  It will,  I feel, help in preventing the copious rainfall  being wasted and running  away into the sea.  While the citizens could solve their water related problems  with simple RWH ideas themselves, the government  should implement all ideas to save as much water as possible running away into the sea.  Will they display the same political will that they displayed when they implemented the compulsory RWH  for all households  in the city more than  two decades ago?

This article appeared in the `Down Town` section of the Hindu on Friday,24^th Nov.`17