Question

Make a detailed study of the various water harvesting techniques employed by the municipal corporation to avail the availability of water for use

Answer 1

Global warming, climatic changes, increasing population, construction activities, industrialisation, etc. – all of these are likely to worsen the water shortage that we already face today. To deal with this problem, municipalities all over India have mandated rainwater harvesting (RWH).

However, its implementation remains inconsistent, as it is a seasonal and passive method of conserving water. At present, Chennai leads in the number of successfully implemented projects, with over five lakh installations. Cities like Ahmedabad and Delhi use purely recharging techniques. In Delhi’s Panchsheel Park Colony, for example, about 1,000 residents collected Rs 4.5 lakh to implement rainwater harvesting and in the process, have managed to save more than 170 million litres of water, annually. In Chennai and Bengaluru, rainwater from the roof is stored in sumps (underground water storage tanks) and surface run-off is used to recharge the soil. In places like Porbandar, the entire rainwater from the roof is stored in tanks.

Answer 2

The various water harvesting techniques are Surface runoff rainwater harvesting and rooftop rainwater harvesting.

In cities and towns, the rainwater keeps flowing like a surface runoff.

They can be used to recharge the aquifers by suitable methods.

The rooftop harvesting uses the roof to trap the rainwater.

The rainwater is later stored in a tank or man-made recharge system.