Chennai: Conserving water has been on the top of the priority list of the residents of Chitlapakkam.
They were the front runners in lake restoration, and seeing the work being carried out in the Chitlapakkam lake, it motivated several people in and around the area to preserve many other waterbodies in the neighbourhood.
The Chitlapakkam residents then shifted their focus to tap the rainwater and started creating awareness about rainwater harvesting.
Initially, the scheme was implemented in houses. Even in this residents came up with a few innovations. Dayanand Krishnan, a resident of Pradeep and Karthik Avenue, shot to fame for his drum rainwater harvesting method which was adopted by many other residents.
Then recently the members of the youth wing of the Chitlapakkam Muthulakshmi Nagar Residents Welfare Association took up the initiative of harvesting rainwater on the roadsides and the work for it began recently. Now the latest to join this is the rainwater harvesting being implemented in the parks of the locality.
The Chitlapakkam Rising team has got permission to sink rainwater harvesting pits in parks and roads across Chitlapakkam.
“You would have noticed, even with home RWH directly recharging borewells, it is still not adequately providing water. We need a. combination of lake, road and park RWH, and house and apartments RWHs to recharge groundwater,” said Sunil Jayaraman, a member of the organisation.
“A 3×10 feet may cost around Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000, depending on soil. Our aim is to have RWH at every park and every road corner before the monsoon. We would welcome any sort of support,” he said.
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