Not always the Chennai residents depend on the water tankers for their daily water requirements. This has been brought to light now.
The presence of open wells in their apartment premises have been a boon now for the residents of Chennai. The searing heat in June made the lives of many residents uncomfortable. In this extreme heat, the residential complexes in Chennai have managed their water needs without even booking a water tanker.
To supplement the water supply by CMWSSB or Chennai metro water board to meet the shortage in their daily requirements, Rain Centre( voluntary organisation advocating RWH) has been providing its help to many residential apartments in the city to use water from the open wells.
The superb piece of information is that the residents from an apartment complex located at R.A. Puram in Chennai has been drawing nearly 90,000 litres of water from their open wells every day. The depth of groundwater here is about 10feet.
According to a resident of R.A. Puram it was clear that the residents have ebn using the open well ever since the Rain Centre has de-silted it. He revealed that even during the 2019 drought the residents belonging to this apartment complex did not turn to water tankers.
In other important localities in Chennai such as MRC Nagar, Besant Nagar and Alwarpet etc, the large apartments have been utilising shallow aquifers through open wells to get water for their daily needs.There are about 300 flats at MRC Nagar in Chennai and 6 open wells have been providing the residents in the apartments with nearly 1.6lakhs litres of water every day.
There are some residential apartments located on the Rajiv Gandhi Salai and these have also opted for open wells and these apartments have got help from the Rain Centre. The Rain Center could be contacted by the mobile number 9677043869. In the last few months, the Rain Centre has been very busy digging out 23 open wells in various locations in Chennai.
Mr. Sekar Raghavan, director of Rain Centre explained about how a survey around Shastri Nagar revealed the presence of ground water at a depth of 10feet. He spoke about the extraction of groundwater that could vary depending on the demands and piped water supply etc. For daily water supply, shallow aquifers and open wells would be the potential sources. These would improve the water quality and lower the pumping cost etc.