No time for shortcuts
‘Acute thirst does not see quality of water & acute sleep does not wait for a cozy bed’
Today the crisis of water scarcity is staring straight into our eyes and threatening the very existence of life on earth.
We all need to realize that water scarcity is no more a fashion topic for seminars and discussions followed by cocktails and dinners and media briefing at 5 star venues.
We must understand the gravity of the situation and act in all seriousness on the issue since water scarcity is a serious problem and calls for immediate intervention through hard & focused action at the ground level.
The web pages are filled with guidelines about roof top rain water harvesting ‘roof top harvesting’ is an incorrect terminology since roof top is only a catchment area and the collected water has still to be harvested. The web sites are filled with photos and pencil sketches of water being diverted from roof tops into collection barrels.
Can we or our livestock or our agriculture survive on rain water collected from roof top in PVC drums/barrels?
Falling rain drops are not selective and falls everywhere – on the roof as well as on the open roads and grounds. The total catchment area which is provided by all roofs added together is negligible as compared to the rest of the open areas.
It is in these open areas from where rain water gets an opportunity to runs off, leaving the land high and dry. The focus should be on stopping runoff and harvesting this huge quantity of available water.
As always some quantity of this rain water, percolates into the ground in the natural process and our efforts should be to facilitate the movement of additional quantity of rain water into the ground by artificially created rain water harvesting structures. The debate about legality and illegality of rain water harvesting becomes irrelevant by the very fact that no power on earth can control the natural recharge process of rain water or prevent rain water from harvesting into the ground in the natural process.
Further, ever since the existence of planet earth, the natural water cycle has resulted in rains and the rain water has been percolating into the ground since then and which stands even today as what we call ground water.
All this water has percolated down the soil in the natural process and filtered through the soil. We see no logic in first catching the rain water then filtering it /de-silting it and then harvesting it into the soil, when the soil itself is a very good filter.
We need to immediately start making wide spread rain water harvesting efforts on avery large scale, if we really want to stand up for not just facing but for solving the water scarcity problem for ever.