Fair Planet

Million Wells for Bengaluru

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The million wells project is a movement that is ensuring Bengaluru’s water needs are being met naturally with filtered rainwater.

The ‘One Million Wells for Bengaluru’, a name that was christened in 2018 is a movement that was started over two decades ago by Biome Environmental Trust, Bengaluru.

Pic courtesy BIOME Trust
Pic courtesy BIOME Trust

The year 2021, saw record rains in Bengaluru that caused severe water logging, flooding and overflowing sewers. Just a few months back, the summer months had caused the usual water shortage and the incessant rains meant a lot of water was getting wasted.

Bengaluru is going back to a traditional method of recharge wells. The water collected in these wells during rains from rooftops and runoff would percolate into the ground and recharge shallow phreatic aquifers. 

Three wells in a well courtesy BIOME Trust
Three wells in a well courtesy BIOME Trust

A well makes people part of the solution towards water conservation. A typical 30×50 land site can get 1.5 lakh liters of rainwater annually while a 60×40 site can get 2.5 liters of water annually as rainwater. With about 2 million 60 by 40 sites in the city, even if every alternate home in Bengaluru had wells, an equivalent 1500 million liters of water per day could be put back into the ground.

The well digger community, the Mannu Vaddars, have also found this movement beneficial as they have started seeing a sustained increase both in the number of new wells as well as cleaning and recharging old wells.

Read the full story that first appeared in Fair Planet here:

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