1.
Due
to persistent water shortages at our home in Pune, I got a four and a half inch
bore well dug in our garden. To my dismay even after going down to a depth of 300
feet there was practically no sign of water. On checking after 24 hours we
found that water had filled up to just 80 feet from the bottom, or the water
level was 220 feet from the surface. That meant about 12 buckets of water after
spending 30,000 Rupees. My hydrologist friend is a very optimistic fellow. He
said that you are lucky, in some areas I still got dust at 350 feet, you have
at least hit the aquifer zone. Hah!! On his advice to check flow, we got a low
yield 1 hp submersible pump installed for a week. The output was exactly 12
buckets of water every 10 hours. That was it. The water table had gone way
down.
2.
My
hydrologist friend then suggested that let us make a water harvesting pit around
the bore well. That water harvesting thing, as an eco measure was going around
my mind for quite some time. Most of the states of India have gone dry due to
excessive use of ground water. Specially, Maharashtra, my state has the largest
quantity of fertile land under sugarcane cultivation. In fact because of
political clout of corrupt politicians, who mostly own the sugar mills, the area under sugarcane cultivation is I think, six times the percentage limit laid down
by the Government. Sugar crops guzzle water like the T72 Tanks of the Indian
Army do diesel, more than 2 liters to 1 kilometre or whatever. So vast areas
have become draught hit due to non availability of ground water. However that’s
neither here nor there.
3.
So
we decided to make a pit around the bore well and harvest water from our 1600
square feet Bungalow roof top by joining all the water outlets and leading the
water to the pit. I designed the filter after studying a few on the net. I have
shown the schematic of the pit filter in the pictures along side. The only
difficulty I faced was procuring the boulders and the 3-4 inch gravel. For that
I had to go all the way to Katraj Stone Quarries and crushers. However since my
neighbour and I did the thing together it was a small mercy in procurement.
Finally the thing was done. Then a wait for the
rains. June 3 saw torrential rains in Pune. I was standing by the pit for 6
hours as hundreds of liters of water came gushing out of the drain pipe and
into the pit. A sigh of relief, the filter in the pit worked as no water was
left standing. Whatever water god poured that day and intermittently for the
next 7 days went straight down. There are still 3 months of rain to come. My
hydrologist had proved right. So our small contribution to water recharging was
on its way.
4.
On
day 8, I took out my float and plumb line and measured the water level in our
tube well. It was 80 feet from the top, as compared to 220 feet when the well
was dug, this really did bring cheer all around. The water harvesting pit does
work even locally and this will be a long term solution to keep the well from
going dry. So possibly in the next 15 days our submersible pump goes down the
well again.
5.
Lastly
if you have read this fully, it is also an appeal to everyone to please, please
start giving back water to the earth which is going waste during the rainy
season. Irrespective if you have a bore well or not. Those residing in condos,
flats, row houses or whatever, please get these pits made in your societies to
recharge ground water wasted from the huge areas of roofs and terraces. If you
don’t, you and your children will pay in the near future. This earth has
reached its limits of exploitation, if you will not do something it may
not be able to sustain civilization for too long.
6.
To
understand the basics go to
Ajay
