High Capacity Recharge Pit Designed By Manohar Khushalani

This Ground Water Recharge Pit is for Societies with many flats or in institutional areas. Size is Indicative depending on the size of the catchment. More than one Pit can be used if necessary. Water to such a pit should be cleaned through one or more Desilting Tanks. See the previous article on Desilting tank

Important: The number of borewells depends on the volume of water. Minimum one, maximum two, Three borewells can be used only in exceptional circumstances. Under no circumstance, the borewell should be deeper than the first aquifer. This is to ensure that people dont use it for pumping out water from deep aquifers.

If there is only direct surface runoff to the harvesting pit from surrounding areas see the next article on built-in desilting weir

Water Harvesting: Recharge Pit with built in Desilting Weir | Manohar Khushalani

For Pipe Filters (Not Recommended in large Catchments) See the link below

Water Harvesting: Pipe Filters where there is a space crunch | Manohar Khushalani

NITI Aayog is working on a plan to set-up desalination plants along India’s 7,800-km coastline, according to a report in The Economic Times. The plants will desalinate sea water which would then be supplied to population centres through a pipeline network.

This comes at a time when severe water shortages have been observed in major urban areas such as Chennai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has made countrywide sufficient clean water supply by 2024 a top priority.

Read on…

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/niti-aayog-plans-setting-up-desalination-plants-along-7800-km-coastline-4183971.html

Manohar Khushalani was a Panelist in a discussion on Niti Aayog report on Loksabha TV

https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/no-drinking-water-will-be-available-by-2030-if-we-don-t-conserve-now-report-119062000071_1.html

Prof. Manohar Khushalani, Editor, OneVorld, was interviewed extensively by the wire service, ANI, on the looming Water crisis in India. His interview forms part of it’s report circulated to all newspapers and news media in India and abroad.

He advocated water harvesting at community and individual level, quoting his own example, about how he built his own water harvesting in his home, as far back as 2003

No drinking water will be available by 2030 if we don’t conserve now: Report

The government is depending upon the desalination in Chennai which is very expensive also however they forget that the earth is a limited planet and oceans will dry. What will we leave for our children and grandchildren? We may have a lot of money but we cannot ask our children to drink money instead of water. Using ocean water and desalination is not the solution but water harvesting is” said former director of National Water Academy Professor Manohar Khushalani.

“It is a collective responsibility of the government and people of the country to save water and contribute to increasing the groundwater levels,” he added.

Mr Khushalani is presently working as professor in Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi and has also authored books ”Irrigation Practice and Design in five volumes”. (Published by Oxford & IBH Sponsored by NBT)

“It is not very difficult and expensive to harvest rainwater. One can easily do it commonly in group housing societies or individually. We will just have to make our heart little bigger and more responsible to be thinking about our next generation,” the professor told ANI.

He has made a water harvesting structure inside his residence, in which he has been harvesting rainwater since 2003, helping the raise the groundwater level in his area.

“I made this water harvesting structure in 2003 when my sixty feet deep tube well dried up. I decided to put all rain water collected on my terrace into it. There are two conditions in doing rainwater harvesting. Number one, first rainwater should not go into it, secondly filtered water should go into the ground otherwise it will contaminate the groundwater. The rainwater which is collected on my terrace flows through a pipe which is connected to the bore. After sixty feet, the soil filters the water by itself. The water which falls from the terrace or from height should be harvested but not the water on the roads during rains because it carries lots of dirt with it which may lead to groundwater contamination,” he said.

Mr Khushalani further suggested that the regions which are facing drought should not do farming of sugarcane as it absorbs a lot of groundwater. “By becoming aware today we can avert the danger tomorrow,” he concluded.

To see the original report click on the link below

Manohar Khushalani Recommends Water Harvesting

The ANI report has been featured in a large number of newspapers such as Pioneer, NDTV, First Post, New Indian Express.

https://www.aninews.in/news/national/general-news/no-drinking-water-will-be-available-by-2030-if-we-dont-conserve-now-report20190620014626/

http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2019/jun/20/no-drinking-water-will-be-available-by-2030-if-we-dont-conserve-now-1992810.html

http://www.pioneernews.in/21-indian-cities-will-run-out-of-groundwater-by-2020-report

https://www.firstpost.com/india/indias-metro-cities-will-run-out-of-groundwater-in-next-10-yrs-claims-niti-ayog-report-40-populace-will-have-no-access-to-drinking-water-by-2030-6850271.html

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/21-indian-cities-will-run-out-of-groundwater-by-2020-report-2056129

India’s largest desalination plan twas inaugurated in Chennai on Saturday the 31^st July. The facility will draw water from the Bay of Bengal, process it using the reverse osmosis technology and supply purified water to the city. The joint venture between IVRCL Infrastructures and Project Ltd and Befessa

Chennai Water Desalination Ltd RO Plant

of Spain, spread across 60 acres, has been built at a cost of  Rs 600-crore at Minjur. It can desalinate 100 million litres of water per day, sufficient for around 2 million people. Thus it would cater to half of Chennai’s population of about 4.5 million. What is most interesting is the fact that the plant will supply water to the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board at a cost of just about 5 paise per litre for the first 25 years. The competitive pricing is because the facility adopts an energy-conserving desalination process, According to CMWSSB officials yet another desalination plant with similar capacity is expected to come up in Tamilnadu by 2012.

Earlier, in January this year, Saudi Arabia’s national science agency announced a new initiative to build solar-powered desalination plants to reduce water and energy costs by 40 percent. For Saudi Arabia there had been no breakthrough in the cost of desalination. The gradual reduction in cost due to improvement in technology had been mostly offset by increased material and labor cost. The initiative will be carried out in several stages, and the first plant will be a small, 30,000 cubic meter per day facility in Al-Khafji. In comparison, the Shoaiba 3 project on Saudi Arabia’s west coast is the world’s largest plant, producing 880,000 m³/d .During the initiative’s second phase, a 100,000 m³/d plant will be built. Eventually a network of plants across the country.