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September 29, 2019September 29, 2019

Artificial Ground Water Recharge: A Challenging Endeavor

Science is the pursuit of understanding the principles of Nature through a systematic study and observation of the processes, reactions and systems that constitute the physical and natural world.

Our enhanced understanding of natural principles and phenomenon has been instrumental in helping scientists and innovators bring about rapid scientific advancements and technological breakthroughs across many fields.

While our understanding of the geophysical and natural processes happening below the Earth’s surface has been steadily increasing in the past few decades, some crucial technological breakthroughs in Rain Water Harvesting have still not been achieved.

The process of Rain Water Harvesting involves critical interplay of numerous natural factors like the multiple unique properties of water, force of gravity, atmospheric pressure etc. along with various soluble and insoluble elements and compounds naturally present in the soil of the target location.

Due to the limited understanding of the natural processes taking place beneath the surface along with inadequate investigative tools developing artificial ground water recharge techniques still remains a challenging and complex exercise.

We have been emphasizing the fact that rain water harvesting is certainly not just about digging a hole in the ground and releasing water into it, as some people think it to be. The key to success of any rain water harvesting structure is the understanding and experience of the harvester. There is no margin for miscalculation that may disturb the critical natural balance and lead to stagnation of water on the surface or cause risk of damage to buildings and structures nearby.

We often see construction of impractical designs that are not in line with the principles of artificial ground water recharge. It should come as no surprise that the number of dead & defunct rain water harvesting structures far exceeds the number of the alive & operational systems, not just in India but the world over.

We are battling an almost constant water scarcity prevailing in most parts of India and people start coming under water stress within a couple of months after the monsoon. The time has come to address our water crisis at top priority.

We at SILVERON keep motivating people to value the rain and harvest the water before it runs off. Very often the rain water is even diverted into external storm water drains and sewerage lines without remorse. It is not in our hands to control rainfall but it is surely in our hand to prepare to receive, manage and harvest the rain water whenever it falls- wherever it falls – in whatever quantity it falls.

Drying lake bed. Native American Proverb. — We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children

While we had an excellent monsoon with above average rainfall in 2019, lot of urban areas lost the surplus water through runoff or floods. When it comes to the environment, we cannot gamble with the future of our next generation. Planning and implementation of rain water harvesting and water conservation requires a sustained effort which we must act upon on a priority basis.

At SILVERON, with decades of field experience in experimenting, designing and installing thousands of effective Rain Water Harvesting structures across India, we also recognize the multitude of factors that make artificial ground water recharge challenging.

Our attention to detail, understanding site-specific conditions and vast experience developing solutions across various topographies are just some of the reasons that make SILVERON the premier rain water harvesting solution provider in India and reflects in the flawless performance of SILVERON recharge structures.

August 24, 2019August 24, 2019

Why do some Rain Water Harvesting systems fail?

When water is not absorbed by a Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) system and it stagnates around the structures or if the structure itself collapses, we consider it as a failure of the RWH system.

There are innumerable designs and ideas floated on the internet for Rain Water Harvesting. We evaluated several designs and have found that many of these have inherent shortcomings which can cause RWH systems to fail. We observed that these designs have not been properly tested in real-world scenarios over a period of several monsoons or their designers simply do not report failures.

Through our decades of experience designing & developing Rain Water Harvesting solutions, we recognize the multitude of factors which can lead to failures of Rain Water Harvesting structures.

The idea of this post is not to comment on the design of any individual person or entity but to select a few basic reasons which can defeat the entire RWH effort.

To illustrate these scenarios, we have randomly picked up two designs for Rain Water Harvesting structures commonly circulated on the internet, which in our experience are not successful in practical applications.

a. RWH systems using hollow cement rings with slots

This design proposes using hollow cement rings with holes to construct a Rain Water Harvesting bore up to a depth of 10 feet to 30 feet, with a diameter of about 3 feet approximately. The hollow cavity of the bore stacks cement rings of diameter 2.5 to 3 feet over each other from the base till the top. The top is covered with a slab as you see in the pictures below

Expectation: The designers of such a system imagine that the rain water will fill the hollow space in the pit and the water will pass through the slots in the cement rings and when it comes in contact with the soil surrounding the cement rings, the water will be absorbed by the soil.

Reality: In practice, while the rain water fills the empty space in the pit it thereafter moves out of the holes in the cement rings and forms a water column outside the rings. Now as the soil which has come in contact with the water dissolves in this water column, this mixture of mud and clay re-enters the hollow space and tries to fill the hollow space with soil.

This process continues as and when the remaining empty space is filled with water. This process stops once the empty space in the rings is completely filled and compacted by the adjoining soil.

Collapsed Hollow Cement Ring Based RWH Structure

At this stage, any chance of ground water recharge stops due to compaction of soil. The soil which has moved in through the holes in cement rings leaves a hollow space adjoining the structure causing it to eventually collapse around the structure as is visible in the photo above.

This fundamentally flawed design increases the risk of soil shifting and structural damage to nearby constructions.

b. RWH Systems using percolation Bore-Pits

This design proposes creation of percolation bore-pits for of rain water absorption through creation of 15 to 30 feet deep bores where the top end is enclosed in a 2 x 3 feet deep bore-pit covered with a perforated RCC slab as shown in the image below.

Percolation Bore Pit Design — Standard Percolation Bore-Pit Design

Expectation: The designers here imagine that the flowing rain water over paved surfaces (such as streets or parking lots) will effortlessly fall into the chamber through the perforated RCC cover slab and thereafter settle around the bore-pit to eventually be absorbed by the bore.

Reality: Having observed a practical implementation of this design on one of our sites, we recognized that when water flows over a perforated slab it forms a film of water and thereafter most of the water flows and passes over. Some rain water laden with silt and clay enters the perforation and deposits in the pores in the shape of a cone further reducing the opening size of the hole on the inside of the slab and finally the hole gets completely blocked.

Clogged Percolation Covers With Silt — Perforated cover slab choked by silt

Further, below the cover in the bore-pit in the silt-removal chamber:

Expectation: It is imagined that the flowing rain water that reaches the silt removing chamber will gently fall on the coarse sand and all the silt and clay suspended in the rain water will be restricted by the coarse sand from moving further down. After this only clean water will pass through the pebbles and enter the recharge pit pushing the air out through the air vent and letting the soil absorb the water.

Reality: During rainfall there is massive turbulence in water leading to the water appearing muddy and also there is no time for decantation – silt mixed with clay and small pebbles flows with rain water and fill the chamber to the brim as intake speed of any recharge structure is relatively slow.

The turbulence in the chamber also disturbs and suspend the coarse sand in the water. This water with suspended silt, clay, coarse sand and small pebbles forms a paste which tries to find a passage into the air vent chokes the air vent pipeshown below the perforated cover within the chamber.

Once the air-vent pipe gets choked, the recharge process completely stops since choking of the air vent pipe is like somebody closing a pipette with a thumb to stop the water column from falling down.

Other factors like the shallow depth of pit, chances of choking of recharge bore pit by infiltrating coarse sand mixed with silt and clay entering with rain water into the bore hole as well through the pebbles, the unmentioned size of pebbles and unclear relevance of the diameter of the pit are likely to jeopardize the performance of this structure design.

The success of SILVERON rain water harvesting designs is a result of decades of untiring experimentation and experience in field work across diverse topographies.

At SILVERON, Learning & Innovation are the heart of what we do.

August 22, 2019August 23, 2019

Rain Water Harvesting: Where does the buck stop?

Those working in bureaucratic work environments such as large government departments or corporate offices may have often observed a unique phenomenon of passing the buck around and seeing those who do so get rewarded along the way.

This cycle of offloading critical decision making by delegating it to committees of subordinates working on stringent deadlines with vague objectives is ultimately only a way of shedding responsibility. The objective of passing the buck around is to avoid taking risks and as a consequence never being wrong.

This short-sighted system empowers those who do not take real risks but are experts in asking others. In this system, if a task succeeds & the risk pays off – those who perform it get much less credit while those who allotted the task claim all the credit.

Coming to our subject WATER – we observe a similar pattern.

At a time when almost the entire country and specially major metros like Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore & Chennai are reeling under severe water stress and scarcity, our civic bodies & water resource management agencies seem to forget that they owe us an explanation as to why such a situation crops up year after year and what measured have they taken in the previous years to prevent such a dire situation?

Newspaper Info-graphic on India's impending Water Crisis — Newspaper Info-graphic on India’s impending Water Crisis

Nature has been kind to us with the stronger than expected monsoon season in 2019. The plentiful rainfall in this season has at least given us some respite from the most severe crisis experienced this year. However, the water crisis & dire warnings around depleting ground water levels are a wake-up call to preserve our water resources.

We need to develop systems to manage, harvest and conserve rainwater which could be used later in times of scarcity.

Interestingly, when it comes to conserving and harvesting rainwater, our civic bodies and municipal authorities are passing the buck around on to ordinary citizens to make immediate arrangements to recharge rainwater or else in some cases even risk fines.

We must realize that the number of defunct rain water harvesting systems all over the country far outnumber the perfectly working systems simply because Rainwater Harvesting is not as simple as it may look. Rainwater harvesting and ground water recharge require development of site-specific designs based on the survey of local conditions, soil analysis and study of nearby structures and topography.

Ironically, when pressure is exerted by the civic bodies on ordinary citizens to construct and show their rain water harvesting systems, the first thing that happens is that inexperienced contractors come up with impractical or incomplete designs that are not in line with the principles of artificial ground water recharge process. At times people themselves try to simply make cheap structure as an eye wash.

We have observed that even some of the rain water harvesting structure designs provided by the civic authorities are only theoretical and have apparent flaws as these designs have not been time-tested over many monsoons.

All this chaos leads to absolute failure of the purpose of the regulation and wastage of resources. The civic bodies & water-supply departments that extract ground water and supply water to industries, homes and institutions have not even setup recharge infrastructure to the replenish the quantity of water for which it has billed the public.

Public accountability should require that our municipal agencies declare the total quantity of water pumped out along with the recharge potential created by them.

When there are piezometers in every area our electricity and water bill should also mention the ground water level in the billing area so that people know their water table and the gravity of the situation.

The government agencies at Center, State and local levels should engage with experts and develop designs for large-scale public infrastructure for rain water harvesting using scientifically designed and tested methods.

The success of SILVERON rain water harvesting designs is a result of decades of untiring experimentation along with experience and learning using scientific methods.

July 14, 2019July 14, 2019

Solving the Water Crisis : A Change In Attitude

The water crisis is a grim reality of our society today. The latest estimates from the NITI Aayog report project an acute water shortage in 21 major Indian cities by 2020. As we approach this Zero Day, there is a surge in our collective consciousness for the environment. The public discourse is finally awakening to this grave crisis and asking the tough questions on what has led to this acute water scarcity & other environmental issues such as worsening air quality, climate change and global warming.

Water Crisis India — Heatwaves and droughts make the water crisis more acute

While it is easy to put the blame on the government, civic bodies or industries for the water crisis, we as individuals are equally responsible for this dire situation. The problem is simple – we do not value what we get for free – be it clean air or water.

As individuals we have an attitude that is geared for myopic, short-term personal gains. This attitude makes us cut down forests for our ever-expanding urban infrastructure without considering its implications on the temperature of our cities or the habitat and well-being of the flora and fauna that surrounds us. The same attitude has led us to over extract and simply dry up surface water bodies (lakes, ponds etc.) or groundwater resources (wells, underground aquifers etc.).

This prolonged reckless extraction of ground water using the most advanced pumps, going to ever greater depths without even bothering to check the rate of depleting ground water levels is unsustainable.

Unless we resolve to artificially recharge the ground water aquifers to cover the gap that has resulted due to the inflow and outflow of water from the ground water reserves – many parts of the world will approach a zero-water day soon.

Through interactions with hundreds of people who approach us for rainwater conservation and harvesting, we have seen a frightening scenario emerge – one where residential societies and home owners pay ever increasing sums of money to private water supply tankers. These water tankers ferry water into the city from farther away each year drying up towns and villages to quench the thirst of our big cities.

Meanwhile changing climate patterns makes rainfall volumes more erratic and unreliable. Even in a good monsoon year, while we may still see familiar scenes of localized flooding in our cities, most of that water ends drying up without getting absorbed by the ground due to the construction and concrete paving of surfaces.

When people consider development of rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge solutions, their primary concern is to provide immediate relief for their own water shortage. Here they tend to overlook the fact that the groundwater aquifers are a shared resource and when they withdrew from a common pool of shared resources, they must also recharge the aquifers without the expectation that the water they recharge is their private property.

As we continue to reflect upon the causes of the water crisis, it is clear that time has come to bring a major change in our attitude towards our environment and start seeing beyond ourselves. Rather than only exploit natural resources we have to work towards supporting natural processes that replenish these resources. We have to make a very strong commitment to protect the environment for all.

We have to ensure extensive reforestation and tree plantation. We have to ensure complete space and protection to wild life both on land as well as in water. We have to ensure massive rain water harvesting and ground water recharge projects on a large scale to ensure availability of sufficient fresh water for everyone.

At SILVERON we are committed to developing systems for rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge in sustainable manner that supports the natural cycle of water flow.

May 3, 2019May 14, 2019

Water Conservation : The Journey Continues

As more people join in, this journey is destined to become a movement one day

Water is the precious elixir for all life on our planet. It is the most dynamic force of nature that has the power to shape our geography, nurture our civilizations and sustain all human activity.

My name is Sunil Sharma and understanding water resources has been my life’s passion. As a child, I remember playing with water – drawing small canals in the sand. I was fascinated to see water flow through my creations as I poured a small pitcher of water into these canals and made it drain into a small pit at the end. As a kid, sitting next to the pit seeing the water get absorbed and leaving the pit empty seemed like magic to me.

For the last three decades, each year I spend a part of the profits generated from my other business ventures into experimenting on the soil and water relationship in order to understand, develop and implement new systems for artificial ground water recharge.

In 2001, I founded SILVERON – an organization dedicated to designing and developing rainwater harvesting solutions. I have been sharing my work and experiences with people through lectures, seminars and discussions at various forums including this blog.

Water Crisis

Over the past few decades, I have seen the emergence of a water crisis – an environmental catastrophe where the lack of clean water is putting an immense economic and social burden on our rapidly urbanizing communities.

As humans, we have a tendency to put our self-interest above everything else and take actions only for our direct benefit, be it social or economic. As a society we have become unconcerned, insensitive, casual, unimaginative and even unintelligent while soon approaching a day with ‘zero’ water.

Individuals and corporations cause immense harm to the environment when they are driven by only their financial motives. From illegal tubewells that siphon off precious groundwater through the water-tanker mafia, industries dumping toxic chemical waste into our rivers and water bodies, illegal logging and mining that destroy our forests and watersheds – the threats to our environment are far too many.

Need for Change

The water crisis is a ticking time bomb that threatens our society’s existence. The need of the hour is to create a movement where we take up the cause of water conservation en masse. However, this movement like other environmental struggles requires the involvement and participation of large sections of our society.

Part of the reason why water conservation is not high on our agenda is due to the government short-term approach of treating water as simply a utility service that it needs to provide. With this approach, the government undertakes costly infrastructure projects to fetch and haul water to population centers from reservoirs far and away whilst simultaneously overlooking people’s encroachment and over utilization of water resources available to them through illegal or overused tubewells, inefficient irrigation systems etc.

To address this impending mega water crisis, the government must revisit its strategy and appropriately incentivize water conservation efforts. It is time that the government realizes that appropriate direct financial benefits like proportionate relief in state or local taxes, discounts in utility bills and/or direct financial rewards are the only means that will motivate people to adopt water conservation and rain water harvesting efforts on a large scale.

For example, people install solar panels on top of their houses not just because they provide clean energy but because the energy thus generated is “free” and has financial value when sold back into the grid. Likewise, people also invest in windmills to earn money from selling the power generated.

While the deteriorating state of our water bodies and a rapidly declining water table are putting our society on suicidal path, as individuals people often ask a simple common question – “Why should I spend money in construction of a Rain Water Harvesting structure when the rain water recharged into the ground by me does not remain in my premises and not benefit my bore well exclusively”?

This says it all but this is not the end of it.

Conservation In Action

It is SILVERON‘s commitment to keep working towards designing and developing solutions for ground water recharge by the cheapest available alternatives at places where the rain water collects.

Ground Water Recharge Through Abandoned Tubewel

As an example of this, on April 26th 2019, in far off villages in the arid state of Gujarat we are attempting to develop scores of abandoned tubewells as ground water recharge structures. These tubewells were built in 1977 at different villages to extract ground water and have been abandoned thereafter as the water table in the region declined.

Rain Water Harvesting is a site specific work and the most appropriate site specific design needs to be developed in view of the available opportunities. There are millions of abandoned dry tubewells and open wells in the country. What if we are able to recharge ground water aquifers through each one of them!

This video demonstrate that we need to be positive and optimist to succeed. We can surely turn the table if more and more people join hands and work. There is always light at the end of the tunnel and together we can march forward singing the famous lines – “we shall overcome“

We shall continue this journey, as more people join in it surely will become a movement one day…