Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Conserve water, people told

Photo: K. Ananthan

Sekhar Raghavan, Director, Rain Centre, speaking at the World Water Day meeting organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Siruthuli in Coimbatore on Monday.

COIMBATORE: Rain water harvesting, recycling and reuse of waste water and using less water will help in water conservation, according to the Director of Rain Centre, Chennai, Sekhar Raghavan.

Speaking at a meeting organised here on Monday by the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Siruthuli on the occasion of World Water Day, Mr. Raghavan said that each one should take a pledge not to take water for granted and to take all efforts to manage water resources. Water is needed for different purposes such as drinking and washing. However, the quality of water need not be the same for all purposes. “So, we need to learn to live with different qualities of water.”

Just 1 per cent of the fresh water was available in the readily usable form. Of that, ground water was the predominant source. Indians had been leaders in water harvesting. Tamil Nadu had 39,000 irrigation ponds and most of these were inter-connected. These ponds could be classified into system non system ponds. Now, several industries had come up on the water bodies and domestic effluent was discharged into these ponds.

In the rural areas, rain water harvesting techniques were traditional. In the cities, the attitude of the public should change. “We take water for granted,” he said. “We need to develop techniques to harvest rain water in urban areas.” If the entire rainfall in Chennai could be harvested, it would meet the per capita water requirement.

Rainfall varied in the country and almost all cities faced floods during rainy season and drought during the other months.

The reasons for flooding were shrinking open spaces as there was no space for rainwater to be collected and indiscriminate paving. Droughts were because of over exploitation of water. These two problems could be solved with rain water harvesting. Rain water should be collected when and where it fell. These could be surface, rooftop, or driveway run off harvesting, he said.

Chamber President Mahendra Ramdass said each individual should contribute to water conservation. Networking of rivers, revitalising rural ponds and rain water harvesting would help. Managing Trustee of Siruthuli Vanitha Mohan said a Rain Centre office was planned here.

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