Approach and solutions- Water crisis in Bangalore

As a blogger and a columnist in a newspaper it is still very pleasant to get e-mails like this below. 

Water Shortage – an Open well Rainwater Harvesting solution.

 

These are the days of water shortage. Krishnarajasagar (KRS dam on the Cauvery) is at an all time low in water level. Water rationing is round the corner.

 

Bangalore is well known for its open wells. So why don’t we revive and take care of our open wells?  Places like Malleswaram, Basavanagudi, Jayanagar and VV puram have large wells in the gardens of houses.

 

Of course, many old houses have been demolished giving way to apartment blocks. These depend on borewells and tanker supplies for their water needs. Occasionally BWSSB water is supplied.

 

I have a house in Jayanagar which is 50 years old. I have a well which is 35 feet deep and about 3 feet in diameter. Many years ago – around 15 years ago I installed rooftop Rain water harvesting structures. I collect around 1 lakh litres of rainwater each year of  three rainy seasons. I filter the collected water from the roof and feed it to the well. In about two weeks of rainfall, the well is full of filtered water. The attached photos will show the well brimming with water. These photos were taken last season.

 

I have estimated that I consume around 40,000 litres of water  each year from the well. The remaining 60,000 litres feed the ground water acquifers.  This is a substantial amount of water both for home consumption as well as ground water recharging. During the rainy season I am happy to shut off the BWSSB supply valve. When I use well water for all our needs, I not only save on my BWSSB bills but also precious Cauvery water which is now available for other users. 

 

The rain water harvesting solution is simple and one can do it oneself. It is a self help aid. The cost involved is only for the PVC pipes and filter. In my case I did the plumbing work myself.

 

I wish other citizens of our State help themselves and become self reliant as regards water needs. 

 

Kindly publicise and popularise this concept so that we can overcome the present water crisis.

 

Thanking you,

 

S. Chandra Shekar.

Water lifting devices – the development of hydro-technology

In other posts I have argued that the first epoch making move for human-kind came from the discovery that a hole in the ground could yield water. Till then tied to the tyranny of rivers , lakes and springs ,humankind could but hover around surface water bodies.

The well allowed them to move into the vast landscape of the earth and the countryside was now all to occupy. Around this idea developed the science of water divining. Where to dig for water , how to read the signs on the land to determine the best places to dig, how deep to dig and how wide to dig.  Water provided the first codified , shareable knowledge.

Then came technology . The pulley must have been the first technology to be invented. This made lifting of water easier from the wells. The pulley then became the wheel I hazard. Water was necessary before locomotion.

One of the water lifting devices is still in use in certain parts of India . This is called the ‘Chadas’ or simply the lifter.

Here is how the Chadas works. Beautiful isn’t it?

Here of course is the Persian Wheel

A basic device based on the principle of the fulcrum and lever was the Joto or the Yeta

Small towns and the water sector – time for a focus to reform

Small towns and reforms

While big cities struggle to match their water and sanitation demand the situation has been worse in small and medium towns all across India, starved as they are for human resource skills and financial requirements. A slow transformation seems however to be occurring almost under the radar at least in some towns and it would be good to learn from these examples.

The town of Udupi in coastal Karnataka is one such example. the city has a population of 120,000 with about 50,000 properties ( http://www.udupicity.gov.in/ ) With an old and leaking water supply infrastructure sourcing water from a myriad open wells and bore-wells the system was difficult to manage. Revenue collection against expenditure was skewed with the town struggling to balance its budget particularly because the water sector was a drain on the revenue. It recently took up a systematic overhaul of its water supply and completed it. Sourcing water from a single source a river consolidated its supply. 2 Ground Level Surface Reservoirs were placed on the hills of Manipal adjoining the town. Water is pumped from the Swarna river 17 km. from the town to these reservoirs. From here they feed 12 Overhead tanks in the city by gravity. Water supply connections have now been dramatically increased and over 60% of the town households are now connected to the daily water supply which has a residual head of 6 metres thus filling up overhead tanks on single storied homes directly.

Leakage has been brought down from over 50 % to close to 25 %. Tariffs have been revised and collection has gone up. The town is recovering its Operation and Maintenance cost for water supply and thus in a better position to invest for other much needed infrastructure. Daily water supply of 135 lpcd is now a reality.

An underground sewerage system is now being placed which will collect sewage and treat it before releasing it into the environment. The challenge for the town will be to recover the O and M costs for sewerage collection and treatment and ensure that the treatment plants run effectively.

With improved water supply and sanitation property prices tend to go up thus ensuring buoyancy in property tax collection which it has in Udupi. Better services mean a higher quality of life and better revenue means that the poorer sections of the populace can be assisted with the monies now available. A recent initiative to provide health insurance to the SC/ST population through the City Municipal Council has been a pioneering one for the state and has become possible because of a balanced budget.

Ullal is another neighbouring town which too has replicated the effort of improved water supply and sewerage services. The town of Bantwal developed a hand held Simputer based water billing and collection system and thus upped its revenues. It now bills its households on site and collects monies at the house itself. This seems to be the first of its kind innovation by a small town in using a Simputer for this job.

The town of Maddur targeted 5 slums within the town and gave every household a water connection, toilets and sewerage connections. A dramatic improvement in quality of life is the result.

Towns too are learning to roll out a pro-poor water and sanitation policy. With the 22.75 % funds , by law meant to be expended on SC/ST category, towns are giving universal individual water and sanitation connections, funding toilets and even generating health insurance for the populace. This is social targeting of the vulnerable and helping them overcome infrastructure access hurdles at its best.

The interventions in small towns with a population of less than 100,000 seem to indicate that much less energy and capital is necessary for reform. Even a single committed politician or bureaucrat or engineer seems capable of bringing radical change and improvement. Of course institutional support from state level agencies like the KUIDFC and KUWS&DB is essential. The focus should be on unleashing innovations and supporting new ideas emerging from these towns.

By focusing on the 214 small and medium towns in Karnataka the budget to be presented next year can bring about dramatic transformation in the quality of life of people and draw investments away from the primary cities in the state thus ensuring a relatively more spatially spread urban development.

Water and sanitation services are key followed by roads, energy and solid waste management systems. Given a buoyant economy investments in these sectors can only spur employment and further economic growth. It is time we focused exclusively on small and medium towns and brought about a radical change in infrastructure. That would be water wisdom.

A groundwater civilization – the history of the well

A constant point from me is that India has been and continues to be a groundwater civilization. As early as the Harappan civilization (Indus-Saraswati) wells were the primary means of drawing water . Wells also apparently were used as a form of purifying water with the earth as a filter.

Well at Lothal – possibly 2650 B.C.

It is quite amazing to see wells in the Harappan excavations , at Sarnath and at Konarak. Each with its own character based on soil and groundwater conditions.

The well at Lothal was one time close to a river and had to cope with floods. Now the river and the sea have receded and there is high salinity in the area. It therefore has to skim the surface rainwater from a maximum depth of 20 feet.

Wedge shaped bricks have been developed to give the well stability and it has been lined by pottery rings in Bengal and Orissa. The well gives us 24/7 water and also water without electricity.

The well talks to us telling us summer is coming and that one has to be careful with the water that one uses. It is both a functional device providing water as well as a communicator of the scarcity of ecological resource that is water.

The well has perhaps been humankinds first effort at accessing water through ingenuity and effort. Previous access being through natural sources. A hole in the ground yielding water must have liberated us from the tyranny of rivers and lakes.

This would have been also where agriculture which was rain-fed could now be supplemented and thus was born the first technology the pulley. The pulley later on became the wheel .

The well is a fascinating construct and more as and when one explores this beautiful thing.

At Lothal..another well next to a drain.

The ornamentation and the architecture followed when there was enough accumulated capital with kings to invest like the Rani-ni-Vaav at Patan

Here for example is a well not on an individuals land but on community land . The waters are shared and farmers have come to an understanding as to who can use it and how. This is a shared community resource but with greater knowledge perhaps even more sustainable use is possible.

Community owned wells and sharing of groundwater, Rajasthan.

 Here is another example from when a well used to be dug in Bangalore. With rainwater harvesting the gentleman has revived it and is getting 24/7 water at Rs 2.50 a kilo-litre. Ecological, sustainable,economical and with full stakeholder participation and ownership of water

Recharging and reviving an open well in Bangalore through rainwater harvesting

This open well at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore was abandoned and its memory lost. When revived and cleaned it now produces more than 90 % of the water required by the establishment.

Cleaning and reviving an old open well in Bangalore

and this bit of news sent on twitter by a friend on the oldest well in the world

The oldest well in the world -9000 years old from Syria  and one from Israel with this quote

“Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a well dating back to the Neolithic period some 8,500 years ago, Israel’s Antiquities Authority said on Thursday, adding that two skeletal remains were found inside.

The well, discovered in the Jezreel Valley in the northern Galilee region, contained a variety of artefacts, as well as the remains of a woman approximately 19 years old, and an older man, the IAA said. “

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/ancient-well-israel_n_2093041.html

This homage to the freedom fighters of 1857 is also emblematic of the well   http://www.indianexpress.com/news/well-where-british-buried-1857-martyrs-to-be-dug-remains-immersed-in-ganga/1054408/0

Death of an open well- India

The coming of electricty and with the 15 H.P pump means water is overextracted and the shallow aquifer killed. Why do we not manage our shallow aquifers better? Why is water not used carefully and sustainably? What are the institutional and stuctural changes needed to understand ground water better? What is the water literacy that the farmer needs?

Observing water in nature

WATER WISE

Observation – The key to good water sensitive design

S.Vishwanath
http://www.rainwaterclub.org

As large sites are taken up for development designing sustainable water systems becomes both an art and a science. While at the individual household level water management is relatively simple, involving such elements as installing water conserving devices , designing for water harvesting, arranging for water efficient gardens, ensuring recharge of ground water, reusing grey water and possibly recycling sewage water things are a bit more complex at layout levels or at development levels averaging over an acre.
Scale: The scale of the solution can be at individual household level, at the community level and at the city scale. The term community encompasses streets or wards, neighbourhoods or even gated communities of flats and apartments. Generally the principle of subsidiarity prevails, try to find the solution at the lowest possible level of ownership. Escalate the solution only if it is inevitable.
Community level actions for water have been numerous and are worth emulating. In a small town close to Bangalore a community of volunteers got together to clean an old ,large open well. This well had become a dumping ground for garbage and water seeping through this garbage was further contaminating the ground water. Citizens came together slowly and gradually, working on Sundays and cleaned up the well. The process has moved on to other such open wells and these citizens are now engaging with the authorities to ensure the revival of as many such water bodies as possible. It was the observation power of one concerned citizen that lead to a town wide movement to engage with open wells.
In Chennai citizen groups have come together to revive many temple tanks aided by organizations such as the Rotary and several Civil society groups. In Jaipur a multi-national corporation has come forward to help restore an old ‘Bawdi’ – a step well dating centuries. All these examples are of individuals or groups thinking beyond self for taking action.

Within the boundary: At a very large scale development in Mysore, a project is under development and expansion for a software company. It is a residential campus covering more than 200 acres of land. A typical design for a water system would have looked at the piped water option coming to the campus and designed the water supply around it. To cater to the pollution control norms a sewage recycling system would have been set up and the treated water used for landscaping purpose. At times when the piped water failed to arrive, private water tankers would have brought in the emergency water requirement.
A walk around the campus with an eye for water however revealed the presence of a spring on site. For those with a internet connection http://youtube.com/watch?v=3_qmbgiUkIQ will give a flavour of how a spring looks.

Conversations with the locals revealed that this was perennial. An old well with water indicated a good shallow aquifer. A pump test confirmed a reliable and reasonable yield. It was clear that a discharge zone existed on site and that the recharge area needed to be clearly identified and steps taken to enhance recharge.

Observation, walking around, talking and looking out for the right things helped take appropriate water harvesting and water management decisions. Three wells were dug and over 200 kilo litres of water are available through them daily. Recharge structures are being designed to enhance shallow aquifer content and keep them full. The spring is a good and reliable indicator of the water in the shallow aquifer as well as base flows.

At a city scale: Understanding the water cycle from source to sink for a city is crucial. How many know what is happening in the catchment of source rivers which provide water to a town? What will be the impact of climate change? It would be therefore important to look at the water features around a town and enhance their storage and recharge capacity. It would also do good to be observational and feed in to the system the management of all surface water bodies and ground water structures such as wells.

The management of water on a large site is not merely engineering in solution but also involves hydro-geology and an understanding of the land and its characteristics. With multiple sourcing of water a reality in present times, a holistic learning around water and its management needs to evolve. This involves a cultural, ecological, hydro-geological and technical approach. Only when we bring in all these sensibilities will sustainable water management become a reality. This is water wisdom.