The rain gauge is an important device. Every morning it is read in the office and the readings noted. This has been an unusual November for the city. It has rained in excess of 200 mm where it should have rained around 60 mm. These rains, however, follow a dry October. Thanks to an unusual low pressure system which hung around for days it has been pouring across most of Southern India. Much misery and loss of lives has followed in Chennai city especially but there are several lessons that the rains have brought if only we are ready to learn.
The first lesson is to be prepared. Thanks to robust weather satellites it is now possible to predict heavy rains days in advance. Disaster management plans, in theory, should be ready at every district level. The question is, is it? Also, how much of it is communicated for people and institutions to be ready.
If the lakes and channels were free of encroachment , if the master plan had identified and protected waterways , if there was no encroachment would there have been such loss of life, damage to property and all-round misery ? The answer is a clear ‘no’.
It is time for people and communities too, to become aware of impending rain and prepare for it.
The household has a 500-litre rain barrel and an Eco-san toilet on the terrace. With the rains the barrels fill up and good drinking water is available for 50 days. The Eco-san toilets work with minimal water and do not pollute the groundwater. With 1000 mm of rain in the city of Chennai, in many places the challenge was for clean drinking water. The other challenge was sewage filling homes. Placing the rain barrel and the Eco-san toilets provides relief during emergency.
Cleaning a channelIn the town of Devanahalli near Bangalore, the municipality and citizens came around to cleaning the major feeder channel to their source of water, the ‘Sihi Neeru kere’ or sweet water tank. The rains which came as a heavy downpour, filled up the tank not once but twice.
What would have caused flooding, through proper collection and direction, became an asset.
In the tanks spread across Mulbagal taluk of Kolar district where drought had been declared, those tanks which had their feeder channels desilted and ready, filled up with water and overflowed. Those such as the one in Kolar, where the feeders where all dug up for sand mining and not connected to the tank, received but little water.
The wells at the village of Doddiganahalli had all but dried up in March. De-silting them had brought some waters but at great depths. The village prepared a percolation tank next to the well and directed storm water runoff to the percolation tank.
The heavy rains have now filled up the percolation tank which in turn has filled up the two wells to the brim. For at least a year, the two open wells of the village can provide all the drinking and cooking water the community needs.
News comes of the biggest El Nino event the world has ever seen occurring right now. This is likely to be followed by a La Nina event of the same scale.
These global events will have an impact on rainfall in our towns and cities. Our satellites and predictive models will warn us.
Let us prepare from the household, to the community, to the village or the city and to the region, for these extreme events. Let us ensure that rainwater is managed positively through collection or recharge in our sumps, our wells, our lakes and our rivers.
Let us ensure that the excess is properly drained off.
In that lies water wisdom.
zenrainman@gmail.com
