The elected members of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) are considering a proposal to make the rain water harvesting (RWH) compulsory before permitting borewells in the city.
A proposal has been tabled by Medha Kulkarni, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator, which states that groundwater level in the city has gone down, but people are opting for borewells. So implementation of RWH should be made compulsory. The standing committee will consider the proposal soon.
“People who are using borewells are responsible for the lowering the groundwater level so they should also take efforts for recharging of water table. If anybody wants to dig a borewell in his or her establishment, he or she should first install a RWH system. The authorities should not give permission to dig borewell without RWH,” stated the proposal.
Pune city has 7.2 lakh registered properties out of which owners of only around 5,000 properties have installed the RWH systems.
The experts too stress on the importance of RWH in the city. They experts have said that Pune has hilltop and hillslopes and abundant rainfall. All this rainwater flows away since little is being done to stop it through RWH.
There are two ways to harvest rainwater – rooftop RWH and surface rain water harvesting. Rooftop system is the one where rainwater from the roof is collected and directed into a borewell pipe after filtration or stored in a storage tank and used for non-potable requirements. Collection of rainwater that falls on the ground is called surface rain water harvesting. This water is poluted as it comes in contact with the ground, so it should be used to recharge the groundwater by means of filtering recharge pits. Installing a rainwater harvesting system in an existing building can cost between Rs 2,000 and Rs 30,000 for an area of about 300 sq m.
