Rains bring smiles to far-flung Samarpan’s residents

A rainwater harvesting project in a 32-acre gated community located along the Whitefield-Hoskote road was finished just in the nick of time this May, before the monsoons came in to Bengaluru.

The residents of Chaithanya Samarpan layout at Kadugodi, north of Whitefield, started smiling in late May when pre-monsoon showers blessed Bengaluru and then continued into June.

Water stopped in a storm water drain. It gets diverted into the collection chambers through the PVC pipe shown. Pics: Rainwater Concepts.

But their smiles were not just because the rain brought much-awaited respite from the heat wave of April and May. It was because earlier this year the Samarpan owners’ association had initiated a massive rainwater harvesting project for the layout. A network of water trapping, filtering and harvesting structures were built underground. The network consists of two 350 ft deep shafts, six recharging tanks, 45 Infiltration wells, alongwith 10 pre-existing water soak pits.

Everyone was looking for the arrival of the rains. Unlike the previous few years where the rains were wasted at a time when the project was still on paper, these were the maiden rains for the community’s harvesting scheme.

Water collected in a 20ftX20ft rainwater soak pit. Pics: Rainwater Concepts.

As it turned out, Bengaluru received major rains in the last week of May. After these pre-monsoon showers, Manjunath Athrey, 44, the Samarpan management committee member in-charge of the project called the contractor firm and asked them to show him proof of water getting collected and sent into earth. Sure enough, the pictures told the story for every structure that was checked.

Athrey is an R&D Director on a global tech major in the city. He oversaw the execution of the project down to the last detail, with the help of several other volunteers and other management committee members. Rainwater Concepts, headed by Ayappa Masagi, undertook the work. The association’s management committee enthusiastically backed the project from conceptualisation to detailing and raising funds from all the owners.

“Water conservation/regeneration is a fear that turned to necessity and is now turning into a passion,” says Athrey about his own interest in the project, adding that it has given him a sense of doing something worthwhile.

At the same time, Athrey is quick to note that one such association doing wholesale RWH alone won’t be enough. “I look forward to the day “when all the associations along the Whitefield-Old Madras Road region take up RWH and Whitefield and water scarcity are no longer mentioned in the same breath,” he says.

Naresh Kumar, 47, president of the owners’ association, strikes a happy tone. Kumar is a General Manager at another tech major in Bengaluru. He is pleased that the project was completed in time with equal financial participation from each family in the community. As a community, they realized the gravity of the water problem, he says, and and also that the best resource at the disposal of residents to address the water table issue was to tap rain water. “This was more so given that we had a land area of 32 acres, and there was seemingly enough rainfall in the last few years too, which could be tapped and used to recharge our wells”, he points out.

“I hope that we will see the return on our investment in the next couple of years”, says an upbeat Kumar, pointing to the fact that the community was looking forward to source water from the underground well infrastructure for the layout’s needs itself, to get rid of dependence on tankers, and that journey has only begun.

Comments:

  1. Vasanthkumar Mysoremath says:

    Excellent grass root level achievement. Congratulations to the team of Kadugodi Community RWH. Keep up the good work and help other community RWHs to undertake this immediately and help themselves and also help replenishment of ground water. Every drop counts and it will turn out to be elixir of life.

  2. Vasanthkumar Mysoremath says:

    In addition to people’s participation, such RWH facilities should be undertaken by all authorities in Government/Corporation who hold lots of unused land around their offices or waste lands or arid/semi-arid lands so that people can emulate this effort. One problem with this is its replicability by people is the cost factor. Groups of people can come together, dig a few sink pits in waste lands since Bengaluru’s tar roads/concrete footpaths does not allow water to percolate.

  3. shantha divakaran says:

    wonderful conservation… would like to contact Mr. Manjunath
    Anthrey. Request contact details.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Similar Story

City Buzz: Diwali-led pollution spike in Delhi | Municipal green bonds issue… and more

Other news: AQI round-up in cities; Lancet report highlights risks to India from extreme heat; office rents surge to pre-pandemic levels.

Delhi world's 'most polluted' city post Diwali: Study Delhi's Diwali night blazed with colours and high-decibel firecrackers. The Delhi Fire Services (DFS) department received a record number of 318 distress or emergency calls of fire accidents, out of which 280 were alerts. According to Swiss firm IQ Air, the air quality index stood at over 345 shortly after dawn, in the "hazardous" category, with New Delhi at the top of a real-time global list as the world's most-polluted city. However, on November 1st, Environment Minister Gopal Rai expressed gratitude to Delhiites for "largely refraining from bursting firecrackers" on Deepavali, which helped…

Similar Story

How to save a neighbourhood park — Mumbaikars show the way with Patwardhan Park

A detailed account of how citizens got city authorities to reverse their decision to build an underground parking lot under a park in Bandra.

On September 22nd, the playground on the Raosaheb Patwardhan Park resembled a happy space where people gathered to enjoy and chat, children played football, a few played badminton or even hula hoops. A group jived over Zumba dance moves, while others danced to the live percussion music. The crowd had gathered to celebrate the playground being saved from the clutches of cemented development. A cake was cut to celebrate the occasion. Elected representatives from all the major political parties, Varsha Gaikwad, Mumbai head of the Congress, Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena and even Ashish Shelar, the local Bharatiya Janata…