School to harvest rain water

6 July 2012

biswabrata goswami
TAMLUK, 6 JULY: The Karanjee Subhash Vidyabhaban at Balisai in East Midnapore will be the first school to implement a Central rainwater harvesting project.
“This is the first of its kind in the district, a school is going to have a rainwater harvesting project. It will inculcate the habit of conserving rainwater among students for their own use”, said Mr Nandagopal Patra, secretary of the school’s managing committee.
The school authorities have decided to engage teachers and students in the project.
 The state government has already  commissioned a rainwater harvesting project under ‘Jal Dharo Jal Bharo’ scheme from this month. A few months ago, when the state government geared up to implement this Central project across the state, the school authorities had applied for the implementation of the project in their school. Mr Patra said the Public Health Engineering department of Digha sub-division had recently sanctioned the project and engineers have already visited the site where the four tanks would be set up.
 The tanks will have a capacity of 20000 litres each, he said. Indiscriminate pumping of water by various means has taken a toll on the groundwater level in the coastal areas of the district. The situation in blocks like Moyna, Patashpur-I and II, Bhagawanpur-I and II, Khejuri, Contai, Ramnagar-I and II, Chandipur,  Nandigram-I and II, Tamluk, Haldia, Panskura and Kolaghat is alarming since lakhs of farmers rely on groundwater for irrigation. As farmers drilled more ~ and deeper ~ wells without seeking permission from the administration, experts say there is a danger that groundwater will deplete drastically. A senior administrative official said a survey conducted by the PHE department and various NGOs in the recent years have found that there are many schools in the district which remain inundated during the monsoon and and face severe water crisis in the post-monsoon season.
“Under such circumstances, the rain water harvesting scheme is the best solution for these schools,” the official said. mplementation of the scheme is not costly. We will have to create the  infrastructure  to store the  rainwater on the rooftop of schools. The only responsibility they have  is to open the lids of the tanks when it is raining and then shut them once they are filled,” the official said.