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Water Management in Chennai

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Drain the Collected Rainwater and Used Water into Ground

We must at our individual level save the water by reducing the consumption as much as possible. The water leaks, excessive flow of water in flushes, and "shower facilities" for bathing are some of the unjustifiable wastage of water. Although, a lot of building came up in Chennai in the last two decades, we must not ignore the fact that rainwater falls on the area over these buildings anyway. The only change because of these constructions is that the rainwater now rolls into streets and then into street canals. The ultimate destination for this water is now the Bay of Bengal rather than the ground. We must try to catch the rainwater on the terrace of every building by fixing a trough with reasonable depth on the terrace. This trough can be made of cheap and light material. The water collected in this terrace trough can be purified using alum and chlorine bleach, and can be directly connected to the water tank on the terrace. Otherwise, the water collected in this trough can be directed through a drainpipe into the drilled hole within the building for pebble percolation into the ground. All the right thinking people should make a provision in their houses to direct all the used water (except the toilet water) to the ground through a drilled hole. An additional percentage tax should be levied along with property tax for complete concrete flooring/construction within a premise. The toilet water alone should be directed to the septic tank and drained into municipal canal or gutter. The government should encourage people to come forward and install these facilities in their buildings by waiving 5-10% of the property tax per annum. The loss in exchequer because of such tax waiver would tantamount to a meager percentage of the money spent on temporary solutions or centralized mega projects. It would not be unjustifiable if the government passes a regulation that if a construction is made by not adhering to some of the above guidelines, it would either be penalized or the building would not be given the water connection.

Exnora Type Collection of Used water

Few years back, people would have laughed at the idea of collecting the garbage from every door to facilitate the streamlined disposal of waste. Here, the suggestion is that if the house does not have the facility to direct the used water into the ground, through the drilled holes, the water used for washing cloths and utensils from these houses/buildings should be collected in the drums given by say an NGO/Municipal Corporation. These drums would be taken to a central place where the packed bed kind of filtration would be carried out to remove all the dirt and surface active detergents. This filtered water would then be purified. This purified water would then be recycled through the Municipal water tanks. Before ridiculing this idea, one must keep in mind that more than two thirds of the water used by a household is for cloths and utensil cleaning, and for bathing purpose. We planned a 1200 crore Krishna water project. Then and there, we talk about "artificial rains" to massage our science ego. They did not solve the water problem of Chennai. Now, we talk about a multi crore "Revised Veeranam" project. These are ample evidences to conclude that we must adopt few de-centralized practices to augment our water requirement in Chennai. These steps would not only be cost-effective but would also give the desired results. We must gear up to the prevailing pathetic situation sooner than later, otherwise the situation would go from bad to worse and would also evade all our strategies.

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