CSE s EFFORTS
At the invitation of President K R Narayanan, the Centre for Science and Environment (cse), sent experts to investigate the possibility of rainwater harvesting at the President's Estate.
After visiting the estate, the team proposed to harvest rainwater from the estate rooftops, paved and unpaved areas. This was calculated to be around 856.8 millimetres. The team decided to harvest water from the rooftops of Rashtrapati Bhavan and store it in underground tanks. The excess water will be used to recharge dug and bore wells. The water collected in the two underground tanks (each with a capacity of 1 lakh litres) will be used for low-quality usage. If found acceptable, the water will also be used for drinking purposes. The cse team, with help from the estate engineers, has also proposed to tap surface runoff through johads, or ponds for groundwater recharge. In addition, the engineers are planning to divert stormwater drains for recharging abandoned wells.
This will enable the estate to meet a part of its needs from its own water resources, without depending on Municipal water supply and also to improve the estate's groundwater quality, which is has traces of flourides. In fact, this will help reduce the Rs 50 lakh bill which the estate pays to the New Delhi Municipal Corporation as water charges.
cse has also harvested water on its Tughlakabad office premises. Rainwater is collected in underground tanks and used to recharge borewells. From about 20 mm of rain water on June 21 and July 5, the centre harvested about 2,800 litres which was stored in their tank.
The height of stormwater drains has been increased to avoid flow of rainwater into these drains. Assuming the annual average rainfall is about 700 mm, it is estimated that from these measures about 6.7 lakh litres of water can be reused. Around 3.3 lakh litres will be used to recharge borewells and the rest will be collected and reused.
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