water harvesting?

Question

india is one country in d world where u hav floods during d rainy season..........n drought during d later seasons..........why water harvesting is made as law...........why d govt doesnt forces d people to use various measures to curb d problem.........place like mumbai faces water shortage.............why is that water cuttig is done during winters when we need less water..........what other ways can be there to curb d problem of cities like mumbai?????

Answer 1

water harvesting is aproceess by which the rain water precipitated in the premises of every resident can see that percolated in to ground by constructing rain water harvesting pit,by diverting in to old abondened bore well or open well,or storing in underground sump etc. this will help in rising of ground water table and there by could utilised during lean period/drought period by drafting. this can be achived by motivating people throw press,electronic mrdia,cinema slides,pamplates,and also making compulsory to each and every househole,institutions,inaddition making mandatory for buidingpermissions. afeter giving aperiod of one or two yeras if the resident/institution does not do or maintain properly the same shuld be done by localbody collecting double the money incurred. this will create aeareness among every body and we can see miraculus results.

Answer 2

Rain Water Harvesting is a way to capture the rain water when it rains, store that water above ground or charge the underground and use it later. This happens naturally in open rural areas. But in congested, over-paved metropolitan cities, we need to create methods to capture the rain water.

A sample urban installation - Roof rainwater collection - in a metropolitan city

· If you live in a single dwelling house or a multi-tenant apartment complex, you already have 80% of the RWH system. We just need re-orient the plumbing design.

· The present design of the house will take all the rainwater from the roof and all the ground level areas surrounding the house and flow the water towards the street. (where it floods the street, clogs the storm drains and sewer lines for a few days, before flowing away as sewage water)

· From the roof tops, bring the rainwater down using closed PVC pipes and direct it to a sump. Include a simple 3-part filteration unit consisting of sand, brick jelly and broken mud bricks

· If you do not have sump, use a well. In many parts of the country, old wells when they go dry, is used as garbage dumps. Please clean the well and put the rain water into it.

· If you do not have a well, construct a baby well (about 2ft in diameter and about 16 feet deep based on soil structure)

· Other types of RWH - collect the ground water and stop their flow at the gate. Put a concrete slab with holes in it, build a 2 feet deep pit, across the full width of the gate. Collect and connect a pipe and flow the water to a well or a baby well.

Costs

All costs are subject to local variations in different parts of India. Use these figures for budgetary purposes only.

· Most often, the cost is from the PVC pipes. A 4" diameter PVC pipe costs Rs xx per linear foot. A 5" pipe costs lot more than a 4" pipe.

· If you do not have a sump, include about Rs 5 per litre of water storage. So, a 10,000 litre size sump will cost Rs 50,000. (For a family of 4, using about 80 litres per day per person, this 10,000 litre size sump will contain 1 month's water needs for this family.

· If you do not have old style well - 6' to 8' diameter and about 60 feet deep, it will cost about Rs 5,000.

If you wish to construct a baby well, it may cost around Rs 2,500

Benefits

· A water tanker bringing water from unknown sources and untested for its quality will cost about Rs 1000 to Rs 2500 for 10,000 litres of water.

· You cannot put a price on 'peace of mind' knowing that you have water for a month.

Did you know that..

· A well is not for storing water. The well connects the surface to the underground water sources. Based on the underground water availability during a rainy season, the water level in the well will go up and down.

· Long after the rains have stopped, the well gets its water from the underground sources leaking into it.

· Where you get water using a bore-well, rain water did percolate through any soil structure at the ground level, including rocky, laterite rock surface.

· Every bore well will eventually go dry, some sooner, some later.

· Use a bore well in reverse. Use a dried up bore well to recharge the underground supply by adding a percolation pit at the top


A sample rural installation - rain water collection - in a small village.

Recognize first that 3 positive aspects of a village as it relates to water harvesting.

1. The village population is about 500+ families or about 1,500+ residents.

2. Most villages don't even have roads. There are no paved parking lots in a village.

3. A villager's house is about 300 sq.feet - whether it is made of a thatched roof or a concrete roof. Even if you collect the rain water from the roof or from the sides, you often find kitchen waste water running in the middle of the street.

What types of RWH makes sense in the rural areas?

a. Build community wells in a few places in the village. Within 10-20 feet from the well, construct a bore-well using a hand-operated pump. Educate the villagers to keep the area around the well and the bore well clean - no washing (human, cattle, motor cycles, clothing), no defecation.

b. If there are existing water tanks in the village, desilt and dredge them every 3 years.

c. If there are any small rivers or streams, build check-dams across them to hold the rain water for usage after the rains have stopped.

For more information-
http://akash-ganga-rwh.com/RWH/WaterHarvesting.html
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=Water+harvesting&meta=

Answer 3

Well we need to plant more trees and save our forests. Saving water is very important and we need to create awareness about it. When we talk about places like mumbai we should understand that it has a lot more human pressure than it can handle and certainly water scarcity will be there. Mumbai has its own forest and if that is saved water problem can be solved to certain extent.

For other cities like mumbai we need to create more green cover and water harvesting has to be done. Water bodies have to be saved and pollution in and around them should be immediatly stopped. One of the biggest threat to our water security is pollution and we need to curb it.

Answer 4

EFFICIENT WATER USE

IN THE HOUSE
one can connect the sink straight to the toilet sistern and so use the water twice ,first to have a shave and then to flush the toilet
also if you bend the ball valve you can regulate the level of the sistern

and always have your grey water and black water seperate
so that the sink and shower water goes directly into the garden saving on irregation and at the same time ,making the sewage smaller and easier to deal with ,this also goes and iregates the garden but via a sitern of two compartments and a french drain ,on which you plant trees,

ON THE LAND
economic systems of irregation like drip irregation
and design using a lot of stone walls ,that condense water in the night
and planting leafy plants for the same purpose
building wind breaks ,to counter act the drying effects of the wind and farm towards agro forestal ,using as many trees as posible to limit evaporation .using shade nets before we have tree cover

and use MULCH

by cutting down the weeds before they produce seeds and leave them where they fall,they will cover the ground and put even more organic matter on top,you can use saw dust,leaves green or dry,and when you plant make a little space and plant in the mulch.this is the easiest quickest and by far most benificial way(for the quality of you soil)to prepare the land for planting

to prevent weeds from coming all you have to do it turn out the lights,you can even use cardboard or black plastic(this is good for strawberries because they will rot if they touch humid ground,and the bugs can get to them).

mulch is the same principal as compost but it includes the whole garden surface
the top part of the soil where the topsoil is being produced houses a world or microbiotic life.

Mulch is organic material green or dry that covers the ground,the thicker the better the composting process will turn it in to black topsoil

the humidity is preserved underneath and promotes the devellopment of worms(their exists no better compost than their excrements)and a variety of micro biotic life which together with the mulch produce more topsoil.

the mulch also keeps the ground temperature even and guards against the impact of the rain ,which would other wise brings salt to the surfave if on unprotected land

Mulch also prevents the soil from drying out because of the sun and,


WATERHARVESTING

the natural way of nature is to evaporate moisture for clouds and this gets blown to places with less water any way ,what obstruct the clouds from getting to deserts ,tend to be mountains that are in the way,
but generally speaking ,the normal weather patterns spread rain evenly over the planet to balance out the temperatures and humidity.

As far as catching rain is concerned ,we do this all the time ,and have done so already since Babylonian times,and is a part of the more advanced Agriculture,that existed with the Egyptians,Central ,and south American indigenous peoples,and many others ,today we call this water harvesting.

In Permaculture the rule is to harvest water to the point of Zero runoff.
this means that all of the rain that falls on an area is absorbed by the terrain and not a drop leaves it.

by building dams,ponds or swales, with interconecting ditches,
if there are enough of these ;the places ,where before the rain water ran over the ground into the rivers and on to the sea ,(in a matter of hours or days),It now runs into absorbant dams or swales and saturates the ground and eventually reaches subteranean water deposits ,taking many months to do so.
Or it fills up ponds that can be used for Aquaculture.
And so a convex situation that repels water is transformed in a concave ,absorbant one and turning the area in to a sponge.

in Spain and Portugal ,which still display many examples of the conquering Moorish influence,One can find many remnants of Waterharvesting,such as aquaducts and tanks underneath the patios ,which collect the rain water from the roofs ,to be used in dryer times.

in Arabia ,on a large scale ,land has been shaped to catch and lead,rain water into sandy areas or to agricultural lands.sand is almost as good as dams because it absorbs water and holds it.

to find out more about Water harvesting I recomend:
the designers manual by Bil Mollison,which cost about 40 dollars.
and is the best all round book you can get.(tagiari publishing, [e-mail])


some other writers that are on the internet are
david Holmgren
Larry Santoyo
Kirk Hanson

Masanobu Fukuaka has written ,
One-Straw Revolution
The Road Back to Nature
The Natural Way of Farming
http://www.context.org/iclib/ic14/fukuok...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/masanobu_fu...

Simon Henderson
and Bill Molisson.

a representitive of the concept in USA is
Dan Hemenway at [e-mail]
[e-mail]
http://barkingfrogspc.tripod.com/frames....
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalo...