With monsoon about to reach Jharkhand in a couple of days, the Ranchi Municipal Corporation is earmarking locations across the city to set up community rainwater harvesting systems. Civic guardians are looking for areas where water harvesting systems cannot be set up in individual households owing to monetary reasons or space crunch.
The endeavour on part of the urban local body is going on even one month after the aspects of rainwater harvesting, namely optimised models and costs and materials involved, were finalised and Ranchi was included in the Smart City initiative, which has water harvesting as one of its key features.
“locations are being identified for setting up community water harvesting systems which will be funded by RMC. Our priority is to extend the benefits of rainwater harvesting to slums of the city through community water harvesting structures,” stated Additional Municipal Commissioner Bidya Nand Sharma Pankaj.
In case requests come from other parts of the city where individual water harvesting structures cannot be built, they will be brought under the aegis of the initiative too, said Sharma. These rainwater harvesting structures will be made with funding from RMC under the supervision of our own technical experts, he added.
As per provisions, a group of house-owners can also opt to build a community water harvesting structure on their own. Progress in this direction too has been slow, like in the case of RMC-sponsored community water harvesting systems.
“People can contact the agencies empanelled by RMC for installing water harvesting systems, but that is seeing, be it in individual households or on community basis. But it seems that denizens of Ranchi are still researching their options before settling for an agency,” stated Mrityunjay Prasadm, a City Manager with Water Board.
People contact the empanelled agencies to inquire about the amount they will charge and materials required for installing a water harvesting system and then go on to search for cheaper options, said Prasad. This is the case with requests coming from both individuals and communities, he said.
Due to this, the pace of making Ranchi households water harvesting competent is quite slow despite the agencies being publicised through pamphlets and advertisements, added Prasad.
A meeting of the civic body mandarins will be convened shortly to resolve the impediments to the water harvesting plans, community and individual both, stated a RMC official.
Meanwhile, RMC is planning to utilise the digital space to coordinate with the empanelled agencies using internet-based instant messaging application Whatsapp. RMC has chosen 12 agencies that can be contacted for building water harvesting systems.