| Background and reason for the project: |
It is corroborated by the laboratory results at the Public Health Institute and the Department of Mines and Geology of the Karnataka government, that 52 percent of the bore-well water and 59 per cent of tap water in Bangalore is not drinkable, and contains 8.4 percent and 19 percent ecoli bacteria respectively. The major reason as stated is that the groundwater in at least half of Bangalore is contaminated with sewage water.
In 1790, Bangalore was considered as the land of a thousand lakes. Today, less than 200 of those 1000 lakes remain, and are no more than sewage tanks. If you travel in any direction of the suburbs in Bangalore, and all you can see is construction activity. The city's population rose from 53 lakh (5.300.000) in 2001 to 87 lakh (8.700.000) in 2011 and at the present rate of growth, it is likely to reach one crore (10 Million) now by 2017.
Unfortunately, the amount of water sources has not increased by the same proportions. Hence, it comes as no surprise, that most bore-wells have gone deeper, even down to 1500 feet, and the ones which are not as deep have run dry. We, as part of this city, are also facing water scarcity from last year. As the need arose, we drilled one bore-well down to 1200 feet and found only 1 inch of water that had a high calcium content. The greater fear is that even this polluted water may not be available to us in the long run.
Bangalore has an annual average rainfall of about 1,000 mm. It has been estimated that 223,000 litres of water can be collected annually from the rooftop of a 40’x60’ house with 1,000 mm rainfall. If on an average, a member uses 135 liters of water, a community of 18 would need about 886,950 liters of water on an annual basis. So water, needed by our community, could be collected from the rain falling on the rooftop.
Thus it is an urgent need of the novitiate community to construct a
200,000 (two lakhs) rain water harvesting tank that will supply sufficient water for the daily use. |
