A sudy of the core of a riverine system and relevance of meltwater in river basin hydrology

An account of the bore well gone muddy.
25 Jul 2010
0 mins read

My house is about 20 years old and is located in R T Nagar in Bangalore. In 1990, I had got a borewell dug. The Borewell is about 150 feet deep and has been giving me excellent quality water until about 2 years ago when I started noticing muddy water. The water that is pumped to an overhead tank contains fine particles of mud which tends to settle down in the overhead tank. Every time I switch on the pump, the water in the tank churns the mud thereby delivering muddy water.

I have tried a number of suggestions like flushing the borewell and changing over to a jet pump from a submersible pump. But none of these suggestions have worked.

Most recently, I have noticed another problem. About 10 feet away from the borewell, I dug a 10 feet deep pit for harvesting rain water. While digging the pit, I noticed a slow stream of water entering the pit at about one foot from the bottom or 9 feet from the top. Before I closed the pit I noticed the pit was almost 3 feet filled with this stream of water. The water had no smell of any kind and was muddy in colour.

Incidentally, my house is located on a 60 feet by 40 feet plot and the borewell and the rain water pit are located 10 feet apart right in front of the plot.

Is it possible that there is this stream of water running at about 9 feet below the surface and carrying with it the mud into the borewell and the rain water pit. Or is this stream of water a leakage from either the sewage or the BWSSB water supply line? The sewage line runs on the other side of the road and the distance from the sewage line to the pit and borewell is about 30 feet. The water supply line runs just outside the compoud wall and the distance from the BWSSB water line to the borewell and the pit is about 5 feet.

I welcome comments and suggestions in understanding this problem.

R Ashok Swaminathan

rashokswaminathan@gmail.com

Posted by
Get the latest news on water, straight to your inbox
Subscribe Now
Continue reading