Visit to Rainbow Drive on 5th April - to see how Ground water Recharge works

Discussions

About 50 residents and estate managers from apartments and layouts  around Sarjapura Road gathered on Saturday morning to see how Ground water recharge had been implemented in Rainbow Drive and how it had worked for them. This event was organized by BIOME Trust, MAPSAS and Rainbow Drive

Gathered around the 6ft diameter and 40ft
deep recharge well

Rainbow Drive as a community has implemented 300+ Recharge Wells of more than 4000 litres capacity each which can recharge upwards of 1.2 million litres of water during every rainfall event. This ground water recharge project has made gradual progress since 2008 till date. The results of the project have started to materialize now when a 250ft borewell is able to discharge about 150,000 litres of water daily (for most part of the year). Ground water recharge coupled with other measures like an increasing block tariff for water, metering and regular awareness sessions around water have enabled Rainbow Drive to be autonomous for fulfilling their water needs

There was a 1 hour walk around the premises during which the participants saw the recharge wells and engaged with Bharti and Majunath of Rainbow Drive to understand how the citizen participation had been catalysed.

A movie that shows how water comes into a borewell was quite eye opening for some of the participants. To see that it is small streams of water flowing underground and not a large reservoir of water that is available as you dig deeper

Subsequently there was a presentation by BIOME to launch the Aquifer Mapping Project.  Key questions and discussions were around

1. Whether recharge at an individual apartment level would help - Yes
2. Whether lakes were sufficient for recharge - No. Need recharge wells too. Not all lakes were meant for recharge in the first place
3. Can treated STP water be used for Ground water recharge ? - No. More details here