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Rain water harvesting

Rain Water Harvesting is 'THE' current topic that is being widely discussed by everyone, especially by the people of Tamil Nadu. The depleting ground water and failure of monsoon rains are the main reasons for the water problem that exists. If this condition prevails, there is the danger of severe drought in our state and so the State Government realising the danger is campaigning in a vociferous manner about the importance and the urgent need to provide RWH facilities in urban as well as rural areas.

But this need for RWH was realised many years ago by Exnora, an organisation which has been creating an awareness among the people along this line. Ramkumar, who is a lawyer by profession and an active advisor of Exnora, says that the value of RWH was realised 15 years back. This movement which has been given the momentum by the State Government should be welcomed by one and all, he feels.

Ramkumar hands over the credit of starting this RWH to Dr.Madhavan who is the pioneer in this line. "Dr.Madhavan started the 'Padhala Ganga' plan in Devanathan Street, Mandaveli 15 years back. Even now one can see RWH done through Padhala Ganga plan in many houses situated there. Apart from this, he started the ' Green Revolution' also by planting trees. We were working with him during that time. If you take the city of Chennai, one can see three different types of soil. Near the sea it is sandy and if one goes to the interior it will be sand and clay and further interior it will be just clay, where the water will find it difficult to percolate into the sub soil. There were more wet lands in those days in Chennai and lakes and ponds were found in plenty. There are no perennial rivers in Chennai but it had Adayar, Cooum Rivers and Buckingham Canal. There was copious subsoil water too. But now the situation is different. the lakes and ponds were closed and the remaining ones are not maintained properly. The proliferation of buildings has affected the inflow of water into the sub soil and thus has led to the depletion. For example we conducted a research in 1986. That was the time when we had a Residents Forum in Besant Nagar. Government started building Rajaji Bhavan and we protested against it for the reason that it would affect the quantity of ground water. We protested for nearly two years". 

Citing the reasons for the protest, Ramkumar said, " If one takes Besant Nagar and Adyar for example it is bounded on the western side by Buckingham Canal and rock formation because of which the water cannot flow from West to East. The city gets most of it's surface water when the rain water flows from the West to the East, but in the case of Besant Nagar & Adyar it was not possible because of the canal and the rock formation. With Adayar river on the north and Muthukadu on the south, the only way the ground water gets charged is through the rain water.

We realised that because of building huge structures, the ground water gets depleted and so based on this we filed a Writ Petition in the High Court and won the case too, but lost the case in the Supreme court. We fought for our issue incessantly and construction of Rajaji Bhavan was delayed by 10 years. This case gave us the incentive to study in detail about water problems".

Speaking about the main aim or objects of Exnora, he mentions two things that are of utmost importance, namely environment and water. Environment protection consists of waste management, recycling of waste water and pollution control in lakes and ponds and rivers. "We formed a group called Citizen's Waterways Monitoring Program (WAMP). Our main intention was to prevent the waterways, lakes and ponds from getting polluted. Many voluntary service organisations like INTACH, CAG, Lions Club, Rotary Club to name a few, joined hands with us.

We started in 1994 and nearly 20 government departments like PWD, Metro Water joined us in our endeavour. We conducted meetings, seminars and held discussions and prepared an action plan.

The Centre for Human Settlement (Habitat) sponsored the Sustainable Chennai Programme Waterways, For this programme, Waterways, solidwaste and Traffics were taken up as the main issues.

The issues taken up under this program were 1.Waterways, 2.Solidwaste, 3 Traffic. However, the first issue taken up was Wasterways since we had already collected a lot of details about the pollution of the water ways and also about of the wastefull discharge of rain water into the sea. during rainy season. In the case of Adyar River, each year discharge of rain water into the sea during the rainy season is equivalent to three time the annual drinking water requirement of Chennai. Similarly the from Pallikaranai marsh 5 time the annual drinking water requirement of the city gets wasted. To harvest this water, dams are normally built. However in Chennai dams are not possible since the land availability is scarce and it will result in displacement of large number of people. After deliberation we determined two methods of harvesting rain water, one is macro rainwater harvesting i.e., storing rain water in large lakes or ponds and the second to store the water that flowed from the house roof tops. We took up repair of a pond near Kovalam to start with and we ourselves took care of the expenses. We , with the help of the locals removed the silt and sludge that prevented the water from recharging the pond. The pond was restored and even today the pond is a source of drinking water to the village".

According to him, the water can be harvested by making the water from the kitchen and the bathroom flow into the garden instead of letting it out in the drain. By this, the plants can be watered and the next method is to let the rain water from the roof top fall into a 5 or 6 feet deep pit, which should be dug at a distance of 2 or 3 feet from the well. This method can be adapted in case of bore wells also. He welcomes the initiatives taken by the State Government and feels that RWH will definitely prove useful and that it should be taken up in villages also.