From Dipak Roy, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New Delhi
Background:
There are different options for rainwater harvesting and wise water management (broadly referring to re-use of grey water and recycling of wastewater in general) in schools in different states. Most of them have been supported by multilateral, bilateral and NGO-funded projects. The harvested rainwater is also used for different purposes – drinking after basic treatment, gardening, flushing toilets and washing, etc., depending on how the water is harvested and stored. These uses also vary depending on whether the school is residential or for day scholars.
Query from Dipak Roy, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New Delhi
I am requesting state-specific experiences from members of the Water Community on the following points:
- Please give experiences that demonstrate the extent to which these options recognized and included in the various state government budgets for rural water supply, education, and tribal welfare departments?
- What is the scale at which initiatives such as rainwater harvesting and greywater re-use have been applied in schools in different states?
- Please give experiences of how the harvested rainwater or re-recycled water is used in schools?
Responses were received, with thanks, from
- C.P.Kumar, National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee
- Digu Aruchamy, Independent Consultant, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
- Ajit Seshadri, The Vigyan Vijay Foundation, New Delhi
- Shailja Kishore, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme ( India ), Ahmedabad
- Surekha Sule, Independent Journalist, Pune
- K. D. Bhatt, GSFC Science Foundation, Vadodara
- Vijay Malik, Medentech Ltd, New Delhi
- Dinesh Kumar, Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy, Hyderabad
- Vishwanath Srikantaiah, BIOME, Bangalore
- Chandra Shekhar Sharma, Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan, Bundi
- Somnath Sen, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur
- Vijayan Janardhanan, Corps of Engineers, Hyderabad
- Nitya Jacob, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New Delhi
Responses in full
C.P.Kumar, National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee
The government of Karnataka has published a manual on "Rooftop Rainwater Harvesting Systems in Schools".
Available at: http://www.rainwaterclub.org/docs/MANUAL%20ON%20ROOFTOP%20RAINWATER%20HARVESTING%20SYSTEM%20FOR%20SCHOOLS.pdf
Digu Aruchamy, Independent Consultant, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
In 2003, through a gazette notification, the government made it mandatory for all building in the state both in rural and urban areas (homes, offices, educational institutions, industries, etc) to install a RWH structure. It was forcefully implemented. If any building did not build the structure within the stipulated time frame, civil authorities disconnect water supply.
Notification available at
http://www.chennaimetrowater.tn.nic.in/rwh/tngo.htm
All new buildings that seek government permission must have RWH in their plans otherwise permission will not be granted.
Available link for the Tamil Nadu government water authority website which provides information on RWH:
http://www.aboutrainwaterharvesting.com/rwh.htm
Available link on all the legislation that various states in India have passed on RWH:
http://www.rainwaterharvesting.org/Policy/Legislation.htm
Shailja Kishore, Aga Khan Rural Support Programme ( India ), Ahmedabad
The Government of Gujarat has a special purpose vehicle to address the issue of availability, accessibility, and quality of drinking water in the water-scarce villages across Gujarat. Under this programme, making safe drinking water available in Schools and Anganwadi’s and other institutions in the village is mandatory.
RRWHS and better sanitation facilities along with hygiene education are provided to all those schools that have been deprived of it till date. These can be extensively seen in the village of Bhavanagar, Surendranagar, Kuchchh and very effectively and efficiently working in water scarce areas of Sandpaper, Radhanpur, Varahi, Rapar, Anjahar, Gandhidham, Bhuj, Mundra, Mandwi, etc.
Re-use of wastewater is done by channelling it to the gardens or plantations. The rainwater is diverted into recharge pits. The teachers and students collectively clean and maintain the system right from the collection of water, storage and its use.
In Mundra, one school was experimenting with the harvesting of water by the collection of dew. They were able to collect 25-30 litres of water every night. Despite having laboratory fitness certificate the water was not being used for drinking because of the traditional belief that it is bad for health.
Surekha Sule, Independent Journalist, Pune
I would suggest looking at the Tilonia (Rajasthan) experience where Bunker Roy runs a school rainwater harvesting project. The Barefoot College, founded by Bunker Roy, was started in 1972 with the conviction that solutions to rural problems lie within the community. Practical knowledge and skills are emphasized rather than paper qualifications. The College has been built by local people. The campus spread over 80,000 square feet area consists of a 700,000-litre rainwater harvesting tank. The College addresses problems of drinking water, education for girls, health and sanitation, as well as social awareness and the conservation of ecological systems in rural communities. The College serves a population of over 125,000 people – both in the immediate vicinity as well as distant areas. For more information please visit www.barefootcollege.org
The Barefoot College has created a massive infrastructure that collects 29 million litres in 470 schools and community centres. This benefits people in 13 villages, who have piped water supplied through this infrastructure. They pay Rs. 30 per month for two hours of water supply each day. The goal of providing easy access to drinking water has been achieved and this model has connected the school RWH systems to the community.
K. D. Bhatt, GSFC Science Foundation, Vadodara
In response to the query on the subject of rainwater harvesting, I would like to inform you that GSFC Science Foundation has published a manual on rainwater harvesting detailing the basics of artificial recharge and various methods/models adopted for recharging the rainwater. The manual also contains some of the case studies to highlight the successful implementation of the different recharge schemes and gains thus achieved in terms of surplus water quantity. The basic objective of this publication was to create awareness about the importance of rainwater harvesting and present the technological approach to the same in a more simplified way for people to be able to implement it on their own.
Further, I would like to make use of this forum of experts and put forward my doubt related to water quality. In case of stormwater recharge through a recharge well, generally a deep bore well is drilled on favourable location until the most prolific confined aquifer is tapped and subsequently, through the network of column and screen pipe assemblies and filter media, a recharge well structure is installed.
When stormwater is recharged through such recharge wells, though adequate care is taken to filter out the finest impurities, it generally removes the suspended impurities only. Since the stormwater runoff carries the load of both suspended and dissolved impurities, the filter media comprising mainly of sand, gravel and pebbles, etc. cannot remove the dissolved impurities since the contact time of runoff water with the filter media is very short as compared to natural percolation of water underground and secondly the thickness of the filter media (generally about 1 m thick) is not sufficient to cleanse the dissolved impurities. In such cases, the water with the dissolved impurities (chemicals, pesticides etc.) directly enters the freshwater aquifer.
My questions, therefore, are:
(a) How can we remediate pollution of confined aquifers?
(b) Can any changes be proposed in the recharge method to avert the problem?
Vijay Malik, Medentech Ltd, New Delhi
We are a manufacturing and product development company specialising in effervescent disinfectant tablets for water purification, hospital surface infection and general environmental disinfection. We have manufacturing plants in Ireland and India. Medentech is recognised as a world leading authority in the disinfection of water and supplies in over 60 countries worldwide for emergency/HWTS/defence forces and governments. Medentech has been working with leading international organisations like UNICEF, IFRC, WHO, and other agencies for the last 20 years.
Please allow me a moment to introduce you to Aquatabs – Water purification tablets. Aquatabs are used by UN, UNICEF, WHO, Red Cross, PSI, World Vision, PAHO and many more. We have different size of tablets to treat water from 1liter-2500 litres. Most of the rainwater harvested is bacteriological contaminated and aquatabs help to make it safe for drinking purposes.
There are two options which can be used to make rainwater safe for drinking. Big aquatabs can be put in storage tank/drinking water tank in schools. This will disinfect water and keep it safe for the next 24 hours. We have developed inline systems which can be used very effectively. These in-line systems need to be replaced after 3 months. Our products are as per WHO/UNICEF specifications and the ingredient used is approved by WHO for lifelong consumption.
For more information visit www.aquatabs.com
Dinesh Kumar, Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy, Hyderabad
The techniques practised so far in India is to recharge aquifers using runoff from roof catchments and agricultural fields will eventually contaminate the groundwater. While the roof catchments will contain toxic contaminants from manufacturing or vehicular emissions (suspended particulate matter), the field runoff will contain the pesticide and fertilizer residues (depending on which crops the farmer has grown before the monsoon). The filters, irrespective of their thickness, cannot reduce the concentration of dissolved solids, some of which can be extremely harmful (like nitrate and pesticide residues). In the case of roof water tanks in schools, we may be risking the health of the innocent children, though the cause is noble.
My extensive travelling in Saurashtra and Kachchh (just to see the functioning of this system) had not shown me single evidence of rural people and schools cleaning the roof catchments before the rains. There is no point in blaming the NGOs and the communities for this. The problem is the effort required to clean the roof and the amount of water required for the same. Even if we do these preparatory works, there is no guarantee that sufficient amount of rain would occur immediately after the cleaning operation. The community members were largely found to be using the “roof water tanks” for storing the water transported through tankers during summer, which would later be used for cattle drinking etc.
The “roof water collection tanks” are often the habitats for reptiles (snakes, lizards etc.), because of the cool environment inside during the summer.
In drought-prone areas of Australia; and high rainfall areas of Japan and Thailand, people do roof water harvesting. In the first case, the water supplied by the utilities is very expensive. So, for low valued uses (car washing, gardening), people take water from roof water tanks. More importantly, these communities have large roofs, which increases the volume of roof water collected in spite of low rainfalls. In Japan also, the water supplied by utilities is expensive. So, the roof water (with 3000 mm plus annual rainfall) is used for car washing (of course by the rich people). In Thailand (again with high rainfall), roof water tanks are used for collecting the peak urban floods, so as to improve the cost-effectiveness of flood control measures. In nutshell, the economic viability is extremely important. Here, in our condition (in low to medium rainfall areas), the cost per unit of water works out to be prohibitively expensive as compared to many alternative water supply systems. Today, it is somewhere in the range of Rs. 80-100 per m3 of water (annualized cost) without any major treatment facilities except filtration.
However, we can get high-quality water from a desalination system at a cost of Rs. 50/m3 of water (that remove all impurities) provided we have electricity to run it. I am using a desalination system (of capacity 10 litres per hour) in my house which cost me Rs. 12000 (cheaper than a 10 m3 roof water tank) for the past 8 years and replaced the membrane only once. It can generate 10,000 litres of pure water in a year if run for just 2.5 to 3 hours a day. Of course, the total production volume would increase in proportion to the total hours of running. This has the size of a 20-litre bucket and is kept in the kitchen.
So, from the point of view of private costs and benefits, there is no incentive for communities to practice it as they get much cheaper water supplies from other sources (tanker water costs them Rs. 40-Rs.50/m3). From an economic cost-benefit point of view, the government does not have any incentive to invest in it on a large scale. But, these systems can work wonders in high rainfall regions (with rainy events spread over 6-7 months), in hilly and mountainous terrains from both hydrological and economic point of view.
I have an open question: do these manuals on RWHS discuss the costs per unit of water (I would like colleagues from UNICEF to react to this)? The economics (private cost-benefits) will change depending on the: physical condition (hydrological regime, roof area per capita and the materials used); socio-economic setting (whether scattered population or concentrated population; city or rural etc.) and policy environment (whether people pay for water supplies in volumetric terms and how much) as my analysis in 2004 suggested. Please read the paper: Kumar, M. Dinesh (2004) Roof Water Harvesting for Domestic Water Security: Who Gains and Who Loses?, Water International, 39 (1).
Ajit Seshadri, The Vigyan Vijay Foundation, New Delhi
For institutions that have sensed a need for wise water management – its principles and practices (after having to put in a lot of efforts for sourcing water), the interest is very positive. In cases where institutions got a grant and installed these initiatives, they are not properly maintained. A RWH unit which is not maintained is as good as not having one installed. Also in institutions, where the drainage of storm-water/rainwater is a problem, RWH gives relief of clearance of accumulated rainwater to ground aquifers. These are cases of institutes made in low-lying areas, or at depressions in the topography. Some could be developed at the very spot which has a pond or a low-lying pool. To have RWH, WWT recycling plant, bio-waste composting, and good greens in the school environs have always contributed to building support for education on sustainable development.
However, we have gathered some disturbing information. At NCR Delhi, there are many mechanisms of providing assistance and grants. Despite these, institutions do not come forward and make RWH units. The first question they ask is “how will it benefit my site”. It is true, the quantity of rainwater, is shared by many nearby places, but the quality of the groundwater will improve due to the inter-mixing of groundwater with pure rainwater. To comply with rules, the plot owners make RWH structures but are reluctant to maintain it. RWH exists in paper and remains non-functional and does no environmental good to the society.
Also, we have felt that individuals and small complexes should not have to shoulder the burden of undertaking rainwater harvesting. This should be left to the urban local bodies, as they already maintain the storm/rainwater drainage at the colony level. All that will be required is to make bigger RWH units taking care of a row of houses and these community RWH systems can have bigger recharge bores at colony parks, etc. These would also be controlled and monitored and the cost would be lesser.
The same applies to wastewater treatment by STPs, all these ought to be functional such that the processed water is capable of being re-used for lower-end uses and irrigating parks, farms, etc. Parallel encouragement ought to be given to educational institutions to set up demo-working units to keep the same in working order and also to set in the propagation of IEC, etc at local levels.
We have had working examples of RWH, WWT, bio-waste composting to manure, etc in urban, rural schools and other institutions and opine that all these ought to be encouraged with other do-able green initiatives such as urino-manure for fertigation, solar- electric uses, biogas plants and incinerator-biomass uses.
Vishwanath Srikantaiah, BIOME, Bangalore
Please give experiences that demonstrate the extent to which these options recognized and included in the various state government budgets for rural water supply, education, and tribal welfare departments?
One of the biggest investments in India for schools has come from the Government of Karnataka in a programme called SUVARNAJALA, which sought to provide 23,683 schools with rooftop rainwater harvesting systems to provide drinking water to school children at a total budgeted expenditure of Rs 74 crores.
What is the scale at which initiatives such as rainwater harvesting and greywater re-use have been applied in schools in different states?
As before the scale of the programme reached out to virtually every second government school in Karnataka.
Please give experiences of how the harvested rainwater or re-recycled water is used in schools?
In the private schools I have worked with rainwater harvesting initiative, and after testing and treatment, it has been used for drinking purpose. The water has also been used for non-potable purposes, primarily toilet flushing. There are of course the usual protocols to be followed such as testing for water quality in terms of BIS 10500. Please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV2l6GC9bVc&feature=channel_page and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxvVSw1you4&feature=channel_page for more details.
Tapan Saha, Institute of Environmental Studies and Wetland Management, Kolkata
List of RWH system installed in West Bengal by our Institute available here
http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/environment/cr/res-20040901.doc (DOC; Size: 124 KB).
Chandra Shekhar Sharma, Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan, Bundi
An article and a picture of the RWH system installed in our school in Bundi available here: http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/environment/cr/res-20040903.pdf (PDF; Size: 34KB) and http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/environment/cr/res-20040902.jpg (JPG; Size: 1.38MB)
Somnath Sen, IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur
Resource material on RWH available at
http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/environment/cr/res-20040905.pdf (PDF; Size: 604KB) provides details about RWH.
Presentation available here http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/environment/cr/res-20040904.ppt (PPT; Size: 1.60MB) is a compilation of key elements used during installation of the system.
Vijayan Janardhanan, Corps of Engineers, Hyderabad
I would like to ask Vishwanath Srikantaiah how a project for 23,683 schools can be funded with a meagre 74 crores? This works out to approximately Rs. 30000 per school and you would be able to build storage tanks of no greater than 6000 litres capacity. This would be meagre storage to harvest the entire year’s rain. What about the disinfection cost, storage of potable water and taps for use? How has the outlay for the programme been arrived at? Even a school of 100 children running 300 days a year would need a minimum of 30000 litres at the rate of 1 litre per child per day.
Nitya Jacob, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New Delhi
I had visited Chirawa, a small town in Shekhawati that was home to the industrial family of the Dalmias. The Ramakrishna Jai Dayal Dalmia Sewa Trust (RKJD Sewa Trust) of the group launched the Save Water Save Life campaign around 2002 in the region to challenge the problems of deteriorating climatic conditions and natural resources, especially water.
They have set up two schools to promote education among the people of Chirawah. The schools are named Shri Dalmia Higher Secondary School and Shri Dalmia Girls Higher Secondary School. Both have rooftop rainwater harvesting systems that collect and store around 75 cu m of water each, that is used mostly for watering the playgrounds. This is part of a larger district-wide initiative to install similar systems in other schools but I am aware of only two large systems. Being a private trust, they have not taken any money from the government for the systems and therefore these do not reflect in the local line department budgets.
In Tamil Nadu, the State Government passed two ordinances in 2003 to amend the Tamil Nadu Panchayats Act 1994 and the Municipal Laws. In order to augment groundwater resources, it has been decided to make it mandatory to provide rainwater harvesting structure in all buildings. As rainwater harvesting structures will have to be put up before the ensuing monsoon, it has also been proposed to give a time limit to be specified in the Rules, to provide rainwater harvesting structure by the owner or occupier of every building and in case they do not provide rainwater harvesting structure within the above said period, the authorities of the local body concerned will provide the rainwater harvesting structure in those buildings and recover the cost of provision of rainwater harvesting structure with the incidental expense from such owner or occupier as property tax. It has also been decided that if such owner or occupier of the building fails to provide rainwater harvesting structure on or before the date to be specified in the Rules, the water supply connection provided to such building shall be disconnected.
Another major campaign by the Barefoot College has covered 1187 schools till November 2007 available at
http://www.barefootcollege.org/pdf/RWH_Structures.2007.pdf (PDF, Size: 72KB).
The college has also evolved guidelines for constructing rainwater harvesting tanks in schools available at http://www.barefootcollege.org/pdf/Guideline_for_construction_of_a_RWH_tank.pdf (PDF, Size: 288KB).
The beauty of the Barefoot system is it can be constructed by village people without formal degrees in engineering using local material or readily-available material. The water is used for multiple purposes.
In the school in Aasgaon village, Satara district, Maharashtra, they have constructed a RWH and water management system. Part of the water from the roof is channelled into a cement storage tank for use in sanitation without further treatment but not for drinking. Part of the runoff from the roof is channelled to the trees growing around the building and the compound. Water from the toilets is also diverted into an open area behind the school to water plants and does not enter stormwater drains built through the village; stormwater drains carry only rainwater to a recharge point while all grey water from kitchens and toilets is used in gardening in the entire village. For several houses also have rooftop rain water harvesting systems to meet their non-drinking domestic needs; drinking water is supplied by the panchayat and stored separately in each house.
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