Let's strive to save every raindrop: Dana Kishore

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is gearing up to undertake repairs to over 15,000 water harvest pits on a single day on the "Water Harvesting Day" on Saturday.

GHMC Commissioner Dana Kishore has appealed to denizens, NGOs, and public representatives to participate in the event being jointly conducted GHMC and HMWSSB.

Water is the most essential for the mankind, there is no life on the earth without water. 97 per cent of the water on the earth is oceanic and 2 per cent water is frozen in the form of snowy mountains, which can't be consumed by the mankind, and rest of the one percent of water on the earth is the only source for the mankind, environment and animals.

This water is not enough for growing population needs, 165 countries are experiencing severe water crisis in the world today. The city of Cape Town, South Africa, stuck to history as the first waterless city.

Many areas of our country are also facing water scarcity. The underground water levels are shrinking day by day and there is no way other than protecting water, to get out of water scarcity.

By creating the rainwater harvest pits, we can increase the ground water levels and reduce the chance of water scarcity. The Commissioner said with the collaboration of the HMDA and HMWSSB, 11,000 rainwater harvesting pits were constructed earlier in the Greater Hyderabad limits.

Recharge pits were constructed on both sides of the roads, public places, parks and in residential area. Similarly, there are many harvest pits in government agencies, software companies, houses, many gated communities, residential colonies.

But there are deficiencies in maintenance of these pits. The joy of building rainwater harvest is not being shown in the maintenance by the people; as a result, pits are being filled with dust and garbage. These pits are built with a great ambition to preserve rainwater, but due to lack of maintenance these pits are being filled with waste from eateries, plastic bags, plastic bottles and other wastages.

Trees, weeds are growing from these pits. Due to the accumulation of mud and silt, pits are filled up to the level of roads and rainwater is being obstructed from going into the them. Thus, the benefit of constructing the harvest pits with a goal is not fulfilled, Dana Kishore added.

There are no rainwater harvest water pits in many of the colonies in the city till now. As such, ahead of the advent of monsoon in a few days, HMDA and HMWSS have jointly taken up an initiative to take over repair works of the rainwater harvest pits in a single day.

For this purpose, the staff and officials of these two departments would restore the pits, by roping in people of colonies and volunteer organisations on Saturday.

Officials along with the technical team will visit the areas where Geo-tag pits are present at the various colonies and locations in the city. With the help of the locals in the colony, the damaged, garbage-filled pits will be cleaned up, removal of weeds and filling up enough sand in the pits will be done. By changing the sand layer before every monsoon season, rainwater can easily reach the sump.

The GHMC Commissioner wished that every drop of rain will be channelled from the surrounding area into the pits so that the groundwater table gets discharged. If this takes place on a massive scale, with the cooperation of all, water scarcity would become a thing of past in the city, he urged.

Dana Kishore called upon the people to regularly clean the pits built in their houses. Self-construction at home and maintenance should be taken up by every household. There will be no problem of borewells drying up if the pits are clean and maintained well.

Every drop of rainwater should be preserved to avoid the scarcity of water. The colony people have to look after the pits and take up the maintenance works. The city civic chief wanted people to volunteer to participate in the Water Harvesting Day programme to tide over water scarcity.