Save some monsoon
Save some monsoon
Builders are readily including rain water harvesting in their new projects. But is everyone on board?..

KOCHI: Utensils are piled up in the sink. Clothes are swirling right and left inside the washing machine. Mary Vargheese is flitting between the two. Clouds darken outside her kitchen window, and the plate slips out of her fingers as she rushes up to the terrace to take off the dried clothes. She doesn’t have time to enjoy the rain neither to collect it! “KWA (Kerala water authority) gives me enough water for cheap rates then why should I burn a hole in my husband’s pocket for rain water harvesting or whatever that is!,” saying this she clips the pant to clothestand.Unless there are strict rules with penalities involved we like to turn a blind eye towards conservation! Thanks to the amendment made in 2004 in the KMBR (Kerala municipal building rules), making it mandatory for all buildings more than 25 l/sqm to have a rain water harvesting and storage unit, all the builders are applying it.From a builder’s perspective, water harvesting isnt a pain at all. “When we have almost 50 to 60 families staying in a building, it’s a necessity to have an extra tank that can easily take care of gardening and cleaning needs!,” says Anil Chacko, Manager, Skyline. In Kerala, where an umbrella is a must in your handbag, you can’t blame the public for not understanding the seriousness of the scenario. With two monsoons, Edavappathi and Thulavarsham, water scarcity seems beyond the horizon but with concrete frontyards and wasted wells all the water flows down the drains.Colleges like Maharaja’s, Kochi and IIM Kozhikode make the best use of these rains. IIM Kozhikode has a pond of 1.5 acres just to collect rain water while Maharaja’s college has used two abandoned tanks from the chemistry department for a rainwater harvesting project, with a capacity of 300,000 litr. Jeez Paul of Welfare services uses his battered grey calculator to sum it up, “For an independent house the total expenditure for RWH is close to ` 20,000!”Mary Vargheese would roll her eyes at the mention of this amount. Let’s find a simple alternative. Water recharging. With just ` 2000 you can redirect all the rain water from your roof and floor to a tank or well. Well, if you aren’t ready to spend that, let’s wait for KWA to increase their rates.

What's your reaction?

Comments

https://hapka.info/assets/images/user-avatar-s.jpg

0 comment

Write the first comment for this!