< Previous page | Next page >

Rainwater Harvesting and Water Security
In an average year, the rainfall on our land exceeds 200 cms, or 8 ft! With such a generous supply, any water scarcity (for reasonable needs) is a failing of people, not nature.

Our dense (and now tall) tree cover has contributed enormously to ground water recharge. All the porous soil below such thick vegetation – well buffered and root-bound against erosion – is like a massive sponge, efficiently harvesting rainwater by soaking and percolating it to underlying aquifers. Here, it is stored on sheet-rock ‘shelves’, enabling withdrawal through open wells or bore-wells. This is significantly benefiting all the nearby villages and lands downstream of us, whose water security has greatly improved.

When a bore-well on our land was first contemplated almost 8 years ago, several in our group expressed their reservations. However, we decided to go for one, while opting for a hand-pump to avoid wastage. This, we felt, would ensure that the annual withdrawal of ground water never exceeds annual recharge. (Our group was aware that high wastage, through the proliferation of motorized bores, was a primary cause of dropping water tables.)

The hand-pumped bore-well proved adequate for our domestic needs, but not for irrigation. Manually pumping the water, filling a drum loaded on a bullock-cart, and then transporting it to water distant plantings scattered over a large area, was too laborious. Moreover, by mid-summer, the water level would fall below the depth of our hand-pumped bore tube, leaving us bone dry. (Being on higher ground, we were vulnerable to the high withdrawal of groundwater by the many motorized bore-wells in the villages and farms downstream of us.) Many of the saplings we planted, just withered and died. This state of affairs continued for several years!

Around 2000-2001, two small, rock and earth check dams were built, one just a little downstream of our hand-pump. The idea was to check rain run-off, and thereby enhance percolation into the aquifer feeding our bore-well. This helped, and the pump yielded a few weeks longer than in earlier years, despite increased withdrawal for the protective irrigation of introduced saplings. But before mid-May, the bore dried again.

Finally, in 2001-2002, embarrassed by the remonstration of the veteran natural farmer, Bhaskar Save – who visited at our request – we dug a large, open well near the edge of our main (seasonal) stream. This was excavated at the site of an old, fully silted water-hole that the adivasis sometimes drew from a decade ago, even in summer.

The open well served us well, filling to the brim within a week of the monsoon, and yielding considerable water for 11 months. (Neighbouring adivasis too drew from it – for their drinking and cooking needs – when their own open well dried.) But by mid May, 2003, our open well also ran dry.

The following year, 2004, was much better, and the open well did not dry. But forewarned by the previous year’s experience, we had already started excavating a ‘rock pool’ reservoir and building a small check dam (with the extracted material) on the rocky outcrop a little upstream of our well. This was not only to store a large, additional amount of rain (stream flow) as a surface water-body for our irrigation needs, but also to enhance the recharge of our well, which we hoped would become perennial as a result.

< Previous page | Next page >