Bangalore (in)famously became known for “running out of water” - alarmist headline that nevertheless brought attention to the reality of a rapidly unsustainable sourcing and usage of water by the city. Groundwater recharge from Bangalore’s considerable rain endowment is a major solution to this but needs to be done by everyone, at scale.
The Rainwater Club/Biome kicked off a campaign with the well digger community involved as well - it not only addresses the huge issue of water security, but also of urban flooding, with the bonus of reviving a major traditional livelihoods method.
This has gotten major press too - but adoption is still fairly slow compared to what’s needed. How does this become the one thing all office complexes, residential communities, govt departments and ordinary citizens throw their weight behind? It’s a mere 30-40k investment per well, and solves so much for all of us.
How much does a recharge well cost to make? - X
How many litres does it recharge on a per day basis? How many tankers worth does it recharge in a year?
Cost of those tankers.
Payback period for X
Written specifically only for housing complexes. Circulated on whatsapp. Especially to networks like SGCC-CompostConnect (community composting from complexes to farmers). This should help.
Building on Open Street Map directory mapping resources. A social rank sticker for conservation star that encourages competition, interest and visibility in neighborhoods. Enabling bda park meets of RWA with friendly tools to further productive collaboration. Have designed a concept for a social sustainable community site and in build mode as part of my SwarmAct initiative.
Thanks. Yes. We have tried to put all of that together (information on costs, how much it recharges, whom to contact etc ) in the Recharge Well Primer - : http://bengaluru.urbanwaters.in/recharge-well-primer-398/ - but yes it needs to be told in very many ways.
Thanks Santosh. We tried putting together a map using Google Maps to mark out all the wells in the City https://bit.ly/3pIGBEf. The estimate is that there are about 1.5 lakh wells - but we couldnt get very far in adding those wells to the map. Tried using MAPUNITY too. The idea is to eventually get the well diggers to be able to upload this information themselves. The younger well diggers are quite active on WA and FB and hence willing to put up information about the work they do. We once organised a workshop for the well diggers where they could very quickly recollect information on water levels, location of well dug, nature of soil etc. It was fun to put it together on a map https://biometrust.blogspot.com/2020/06/when-well-diggers-put-all-wells-on-map.html
Thank you Shubha, will study the maps. We used to conduct city tree mapping activities using combination of methods from simple marking on paper printouts of just the few streets of activity. To setting camera photos in geotagged mode. Will look at this study and give feedback. For one I can volunteer to coordinate with HOTosm (community mapping group) to load this data to open public repository so that it can be updated in future by others and it becomes a live database.
Ok it’s our friends at Shristi! That work in cubbon park metro was lovely. Perhaps we can meet/call on what forms of public data will be useful to have as a open repository with citizen sourcing methods. Perhaps a portal for volunteers to self declare their property’s well/bore well parameters.
From the Google maps it does look like you had participation from HSR, Malleswaram and Indiranagar…,I would be interested in developing an interface perhaps with citizenmatters opencity initiative to get more ppl to participate.
Thanks Santhosh. Sure - all of the above would be very useful. We kind of know the information that we would want collected - the information that people would find useful. Its a question of making it happen and following it through. Infact perhaps what we need most is a campaign manager - who is able to actively actionise various ideas to keep the million wells campaign active at all times. Action items are listed in slide 15 and 16 in http://bengaluru.urbanwaters.in/million-wells/