Ensuring Water Supply for Future Generations

We often encounter experts with deep knowledge and foresight in various fields who in very few words are able to provide easy solutions to seemingly incurable problems for generations.

One such chance encounter was a lecture of a world renowned orthopedic surgeon who said – teach your children to stand, sit and walk tall and they will never encounter posture related problem in life. This straightforward advice if adopted can have lasting improvements for one’s quality of life and of our future generations.

Likewise, we need some plain-talk when it comes to solving the problem of water scarcity. We are deep in water-debt, we continue to live far beyond our means when it comes to sustainable water use. We have been borrowing blindly for our future generations and the problem has acquired frightening dimensions.

There are two distinct problems which call for immediate action as far as ground water is concerned. Firstly, the available quantity of ground water has already been drastically reduced by over exploitation and secondly, we are failing to protect remaining pockets of fresh water resources from contamination.

This inconsiderate exploitation to water resources by individuals, industries and even government agencies makes us continue to extract ground water without even thinking about replenishing the precious commodity back to the aquifer.

Further our land, surface water bodies & rivers are being used to dump dyes, chemicals, industrial waste, colors, paints, metals, plastic etc., overlooking the fact that this is the same land from where we expect ONLY rain water to percolate and reach the ground water aquifer so that we can draw water to drink.

We must remember that sooner or later we shall be drinking contaminated water since the undesired waste we try to bury in the ground will also percolate and reach our aquifer on its own or mixed with rain water.

Consider the pitiful state of ponds and lakes in any urban center in India where we have over-polluted, contaminated or simply paved over natural water resources. In once lake-rich regions in a modern city like Bangalore or the banks of the holy Ganga in Varanasi one finds at regular intervals there are pipes, drains & nallahs of all possible sizes bringing and dumping the effluent and waste into our water bodies.

We cannot shrug off our responsibility towards ensuring sustainability of water resources for our future generation any longer. After all, it is from our children that we have taken these resources – the clean air and fresh water – as debt.

Campaigns on climate-change awareness, water conservation and ecological sustainability cannot be issues relegated as the responsibility of our school children. We must act decisively and put concrete steps in place at the individual, local and regional level to preserve the most important natural resource – Water.

Let us not forget, rain water falling as droplets or frozen snowflakes is the only source of all available fresh water on earth – be it as ice on mountains and glaciers or on the surface in rivers or lakes and beneath the surface as ground water.

The water we extract from the ground follows a simple principle of demand & supply. Over centuries, the excess rain water accumulated on the mountains and glaciers as ice cap and percolated in the ground to create ground water reserves because our water demand was far less than supply. With rapidly increasing population and water requirement, the ground water extraction has increased manifold and reached levels where the extraction quantity far exceeds the amount of water naturally replenished in the aquifers, leading to regular decline in ground water table.

Human activity is causing ecological imbalance and global warming leading to rapid melting of glaciers and enhancing the already existing problem of fresh water scarcity on earth.

The government can ensure and manage to keep our city clean but only we can ensure cleanliness inside our home. Public agencies like Pollution Control Boards, National Green Tribunal, Central Ground Water Authority etc. can make regulations to protect water and environment but it is actually for every individual & industry to ensure the success of these regulations. Water is our collective asset and we are all stakeholders in its successful conservation.

We need to identify and check actions that may contaminate or waste ground water in the same spirit with which we protect our loved ones. We must start to identify the runoff route of rain water or the area in our building premises or vicinity where rain water naturally collects and thereafter prevent the water from running off.

Collecting and recharging ground water through an appropriate structure designed and installed by experts is the only way to preserve this vital resource for our future.

Massive rain water harvesting efforts need to be put in place to artificially recharge the ground water aquifers in order to increase the quantity of available ground water.

The next generation also deserves to have their share of water.

We, at SILVERON are proud to offer end-to-end solutions for rainwater harvesting and artificial ground water recharge techniques.