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,24th Nov.`17
