Who would have thought, a decade ago, that you would need, by law, to conserve water? Definitely not anyone in Bangalore, for sure, where water woes were relatively less tear-inducing. Thus it was, that the nearly decade-old block of apartments didn’t have rain water harvesting systems in place, until the residents had a premonition of sorts about the impending crisis and pulled up their boots to have water conservation in place.
Ittina Abby is a set of 300 apartments in LD Sastry Nagar.
Where is it?
Ittina Abby is a block of 200 apartments built over 3.5 acres of land in LB Shastry Nagar, near the old HAL airport. The four blocks were built in 2004, at a time when regulations to set up RWH units atop buildings were not stringent. The residents draw water from three borewells within the premises, but during the summer months they have to resort to buying water as well.
Thought seed
The builders at Ittina Abby had a dummy RWH unit set up. The demo well was 15×15 in diameter and about ten feet deep, built to simulate an RWH pit. An STP unit was handed over to the residents in a very poor condition and without proper channelizing, the treated water could not be used. Arun Somayaji, a resident and former secretary of the association, tells me that they realized that the borewells would dry up soon and something had to be done quickly.
Channels for rain water capture and storage.
By 2007, Ittina Abby was buying up to 14 tankers per day, at an average cost of Rs 300o per tanker. The association of residents pooled in money and dug the demo well deeper, going to 25 feet, layered it with gravel and readied it. The STP had already been repaired in 2005, the air blowers had been replaced to aerate the water properly and other modifications had been made. The repairs cost about Rs 3 lakh, whereas the well was made usable at a cost of about Rs 75,000, Arun says.
What happened then?
The residents, Arun tells me, began to recharge the well with water from the STP. A shallow well had been built with a recharge capacity of 20,000 litres per day. Every day, treated water is pumped into the recharge well for two hours. Within a year of doing this, people in the neighbourhood reported that the water from borewells in the area lasted for more months than before.
Rain water conservation systems
The residents got a new borewell dug out too and are currently self sufficient. The treated water from the apartment block is let out into a piece of empty land next door too, to recharge the ground water table there. Earlier there was an efficient gardener who grew specific varieties of grass that would grow well with treated water. The gardener had a vegetable patch as well, and several banana plants; each household got 10-15 bananas every month. But owing to a change in the gardener, that project has been abandoned as of now. The excess STP water is partly let out to water plants in the adjoining Utkarsh Park as well.
The future
Ittina Abby has four blocks of apartments. RWH units have been put up in all of them, but only three blocks have connections that lead the treated water to flush tanks in the apartments. Arun tells me that they want to extend this connection to the fourth block as well. Also, several households have disconnected the STP water connection to their flush tanks. The association is looking to get them to restore these connections now.
Catch Every Drop is a campaign on sustainable water conservation by The Alternative, sponsored by Arghyam, with partners India Water Portal and Biome Environmental Solutions.
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