RAIN WATER HARVESTING AND GROUND WATER RECHARGE AT HOME LEVEL

Every year, India gets monsoon rains but we capture less than 10% of it. This is one of the main reasons why more than 70% of our country’s groundwater aquifers have run dry as we are only extracting water from the ground but not putting anything back. This water crisis is impacting more than 60 crore people across India. By 2030, India’s water demand is projected to be twice the available supply. Water crisis in Cape Town in South Africa and Chennai in South India are warning signs of what lies ahead unless every Indian becomes water wise.

Environment problems are best sorted if they are tackled at source. We need to respect the rain that falls on our roof top and not let it flow into the gutter. This film shows how an independent house in any city, town or village in India can save lakhs of litres of water during the rainy season every year by a very simple and cost effective way of storing rain water in an underground tank and redirecting the overflow into a ground water recharge pit.

Disrespecting water by not using rain water which we get as a free gift from nature every year and simply allowing it to flow into the drain is criminal when India is facing it’s biggest water crisis. Doing both rain water harvesting (collecting and storing rainwater) and groundwater recharge in every rural and urban house in India will ensure that our country’s ground water levels go up and we do not see day zero conditions when our taps will run dry.

Steps for Rain Water Storage and Ground Water Recharge in an Independent House:

Slope of the rooftop in your house should be towards the drain outlet on the roof so the rain water falling on the roof easily flows to this outlet.
There should be a steel wire mesh put on this outlet which provides the first level of filtration before this rain water goes into the pipe.
Rooftop surface must be kept relatively clean so the water does not collect too many impurities.
A filter should ideally be put to clean this rain water before storing it. You might have to break the wall a little to trace the pipe carrying the roof top rain water down.
Make an underground tank to store the rain water. After the storage tank gets full, the excess rain water can be re-routed to the ground water recharge pit in your house.
Recharge pit can be made by using sand, gravel, pebbles as filtration media.

“We installed the rainy filter in our house and got a 10,000 litre tank constructed to store the rainwater. With the kind of rains we get in Jaipur (in the desert state of Rajasthan), we are able to collect 1,00,000 plus litres of rain water every monsoon which we use for all our household chores during the rainy season (for our drinking water needs after filtering it in the kitchen, cooking, washing, mopping, gardening etc) instead of using municipal piped water or the ground water. This helps to reduce our water footprint in a big way and improve the ground water levels in our neighbourhood,” says Sunil Pachar. For more details, Mr. Pachar can be reached at sunil.pachar@ecolive.in