Story of Rainwater harvesting
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Rainwater harvesting was also common in the Roman Empire. While Roman aqueducts are well-known, Roman cisterns were also commonly used and their construction expanded with the Empire. ... The ancient inhabitants of Venice established a system of rainwater collection which was based on man-made insulated collection wells.
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ABSTRACT
The story of Chennai, a coastal city in South India is a very interesting one. This city has depended largely on its
groundwater source, whose exploitable quantity and quality used to be very good till a few years back. Urbanization had
not only deprived this city of open space for any natural recharge to occur but also its groundwater due to overexploitation.
Chennai was never a rain starved city but was water starved one from 1998 to 2003. There was a complete lack of
awareness among both the society and the state about the need to sustain the groundwater source through rainwater
harvesting and artificial recharge.
The role played by individuals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the state to promote and popularize RWH not
only in Chennai but in the entire state of Tamil Nadu is discussed in detail in this paper. Finally, the successes obtained
thereafter and the need to replicate the Chennai success to other major towns within India and outside is also highlighted in
this paper.
I. INTRODUCTION
Water is perhaps the most precious asset on earth. Indians have traditionally considered it as one of the five basic elements
of nature, the others being air, soil, fire and space. Fresh water is essential for human survival and rainfall is its single
largest source. The part of rainfall that is trapped in surface and groundwater sources is all that is available for human
consumption. This is what has come to be known as Rainwater Harvesting (RWH).
RWH can be broadly divided into a) RWH relevant in rural areas and b) RWH relevant in urban areas. The two important
aspects of RWH are collection of rainwater for immediate use and the other being recharge into the soil, either naturally or
artificially for sustaining and improving the groundwater source. Due to availability of large amounts of open space in rural
areas RWH is essentially collection of rainwater in surface water bodies such as ponds, lakes etc. and simultaneous natural
recharge also takes place. On the contrary, due to shrinking of open spaces in urban areas, RWH is predominantly artificial
recharge to sustain the over exploited groundwater source in cities.
Most of the RWH found in rural areas is traditional and practiced only at the macro level.
The plan of the paper is as follows. We go on to a discussion of RWH in urban areas in section II. Section III is devoted to
a discussion of the different methods of RWH in individual premises. The activities carried out by both the society and the
state during the last thirteen years to promote and popularize RWH and the successes achieved as a result of RWH is
explained in section IV. Concluding remarks are made in the last section (V).
II. RAINWATER HARVESTING IN URBAN AREAS
Urban areas, which consist of large and medium sized cities, almost all of them face the twin problems of floods during
monsoon and shortage of fresh water during non-monsoon months. Both these problems are of a more recent origin and are
caused primarily due to lack of harvesting the rainwater that falls in such areas. The solution to both these problems lies in
understanding the scenario and making sincere attempts to harvest every drop of rainwater either as collection for
immediate use or aquifer recharge or both.
If one analyses the reasons for these, one would realize that flooding is caused essentially because of shrinking of open
spaces and very minimal area remaining unpaved. On the other hand, water scarcity is due to over exploitation of fresh
water sources, apathetic attitude of people living in cities leading to water being taken for granted and a lack of awareness
among them about the need to sustain the sources through RWH (Sekhar Raghavan, 2004).
In urban areas, unlike rural areas both the aspects of RWH have to be carried out at the macro and micro levels. While it is
the responsibility of the state to carry it out at the macro level, the responsibility of implementing it at the micro level lies
IEEE India Info. Vol. 13 No. 2 Apr - Jun 2018 Page 31
with the society, namely the residents. Collection for immediate use at the macro level involves reviving the lakes and
ponds and temple tanks still present within cities and towns, from encroachments and renovating/repairing them in order to
impound the urban runoff water in them. These renovated water bodies could then serve as decentralized fresh water
sources for the immediate neighborhood and also facilitate natural recharge. For example, Chennai still meets 40% of its
fresh water needs from 4 such water bodies located in its suburbs.
The other activity namely, artificial recharge at the macro level to be carried out by the state involves, besides such
impoundment, diverting the urban runoff into properly designed recharge structures. This runoff is presently being removed
by the network of storm water drains constructed almost all over the city and dumped into the sea.