With rapid industrialization and urbanization is trying to push our GDP up and overall standard of living. While doing so, we are doing a lot of harm to nature and exhausting our natural resources fast. If due care is not taken right now, we will push the nature into an imbalanced state.
We have started witnessing droughts, untimely rains, sudden heavy rainfalls, storms and cyclones, potential increase in the sea level etc. as potential threats. Now, we need to look at ecological balance and try to conserve the natural resources.
Water is extremely valuable natural resource. Every passing year the rainfall is becoming unpredictable and sporadic. We are experiencing very less rainfall when needed and untimely heavy rains at the end of monsoon season causing flooding.
Not only farming but even our daily life is heavily dependent on water. There is migration of labour from villages to cities and cities are growing. Water reserves like dams are not able fulfill the need of water, especially in summers. There is continuous pumping of groundwater in towns and cities. So now it is high time for all of us to focus on water conservation and participate in various rainwater conservation initiatives.
Interesting Statistics: Rainwater Harvesting in Pune and PCMC
Let us look at some interesting statistics about Pune and PCMC
Pune city and Pimpri Chichwad(PCMC) areas are very fortunate from the point of view of availability of water resources. There are four dams (built on three rivers supplying water) namely Khadakvasala, Panshet, Varasgaon and Temghar. The area covered by these dams is approximately 1000 square kms whereas the ground surface area of Pune metro regions is over 9000 sq kms.
Now look at the rainfall. Typically, 1 acre of land 4 months of monsoon receive about 35 lakh litres of water of which we assume about 25 lakh litres can be conserved. Even if we can only conserve rain water incident on half of the area (4500 sq kms). We will have mind boggling number of 281,250,000,000 litres ! That is 2.8 Trillion litres of water or 102 TMC. Surprisingly, Pune’s water need is only 17 TMC.
1 acre of land receives rainfall of 35 Lakh litre.
Assume we are able to conserve about 25 Lakh liter per acre.
Pune metro area(50%) = 4500 sq km x 250 = 1,125,000 acre
Water that can be conserved is potentially,
1,125,000 acre x 25 Lakh litre = 281,250, 000,000 litre
This is simply evident that we should make all attempts to conserve this incident rain water. Keeping this in mind, more and more housing societies and companies are taking lead in implementing rainwater harvesting. From last few years, even municipal corporations have created rebate schemes in property tax to encourage such efforts.
Rainwater Harvesting and Aishwaryam Group
Aishwaryam group acknowledges this need of protecting environment and conserving our natural resources. It has designed and installed an efficient rainwater harvesting system for all its buildings. This ensures that all the rain water is conserved and is put to a good use after storing it.
Environmental awareness is not restricted only to rainwater at Aishwaryam group. There are initiatives like sewage treatment plan, solar water heaters and so on. To know more visit us at aishwaryam.net