MUMBAI: To get residents to take up rainwater harvesting, BMC officials will begin visiting housing societies and urge them to implement the project in their colonies. The civic body also plans to put up hoardings, advertisements and start awareness campaigns regarding the system. Besides, it has also introduced property tax rebates and water tax rebates for those building that have implemented rainwater harvesting.

The civic administration will soon visit residential societies to urge residents to implement rainwater harvesting technology. With the slow progress of the rainwater harvesting technology, the civic body will also plan hoardings, advertisements and awareness campaigns to advocate residents regarding the project.

A senior official said ward level officials would be asked to visit residential societies to explain and urge citizens to implement the rainwater harvesting scheme in their colonies.

Dhaka Wasa is considering a plan to recharge the underground aquifers with rain water in eight areas across the capital this year to top up the rapidly depleting groundwater table.

As the city's water table is falling by 2.5 to 3.5 metres per year due to excessive extraction of groundwater by deep tube wells, the government agency is also mulling over making water recharging facilities mandatory in the proposed national building code, said Wasa sources.

Lack of rainwater harvesting finishing many resources

A large water body at Dhulsiras village in South-West Delhi is an example of what a water body should not be. Littered with plastics and other refuse, moss-covered and encroached on all sides, this water body is also an example of poor management and utter neglect. “It was a fairly large water body but residents gradually began to fill it up and to create more space for their houses and cattle, and whatever remains of it today is used as a littering bin,” said Rakesh Kumar, a resident of a nearby village and a volunteer with non-government organisation Natural Heritage First.

The State government, specifically the Public Works Department (PWD), has no clue as to what the farmers did with Rs.75 crore of Central funding meant for creating artificial recharge systems (ARS) in their agricultural fields.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report has found that only 21,214 out of 2.93 lakh farmers utilised the money to construct ARS, which defeated the objective, improving groundwater using rainwater run-off from their own agricultural fields.

The district administration has taken a major initiative to rejuvenate the traditional water bodies and their inlet channels from the catchment areas at a cost of Rs 1.82 crore under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) Scheme.

Besides this, the authorities also proposed to remove the blockades in channels that connected these water bodies with the Palar River for a stretch of about 20 kms from Pallikonda to Vellore before the onset of the southwest monsoon in July.

The city’s water problem is turning acute as a large number of borewells have dried up, with experts attributing the worsening situation to the absence of rainwater harvesting (RWH) structures. Hyderabad’s residents primarily depend on groundwater for all purposes barring drinking and cooking. With the groundwater table depleting fast, experts said the main villains are the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and the Water Board, the two civic agencies that failed to implement the RWH pits scheme.

New Delhi: The first woman chief executive officer that Delhi Jal Board has ever had, Debashree Mukherjee has taken over the reins of the organization just before it enters its critical summer period. This is also a time when several projects have just been flagged off and are expected to take a concrete shape in the coming months. The 1991-batch IAS officer, who has a degree in water and environment management, aims to bring about massive improvements in consumer services.

P.M.Natarajan, Working Group member, Planning Commission, Government of Tamil Nadu, and a noted geologist, has welcomed the proposed Rs.1,560 crore-project to refurbish old tail-end sluices and construct new ones in the Cauvery delta which would facilitate groundwater recharge and arrest sea water intrusion. The proposal was announced by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in the Assembly on May 7. “It is a good water management approach to improve entire irrigation command including tail end,” he told The Hindu here on Wednesday.