Finance Water Harvesting Systems As A Social Responsibility Initiative
The city's grappling with a water crisis that shows every sign of growing worse but several corporate houses are stepping in to give Metro water's rainwater harvesting campaign a fillip.
Rain Centre, an NGO tha helps residents set up rainwa ter harvesting structures, said it has received proposals from various corporate houses to set up rainwater harvesting systems in open spaces and in charitable institutions as par of their corporate social re sponsibility activities.
The centre, with help from corporates, recently set up rainwater harvesting systems in an old age home in Chetpe and on the premises of the Theosophical Society . “With water increasingly becoming a concern, corporate houses are expanding their corporate social responsibility activities by making water conservation a key focus area,“ Rain Centre's Sekhar Raghavan said.
Raghavan said the centre is looking provide rainwater harvesting solutions at charitable institutions that have adequate open space to accommodate the systems. In the past four months, the centre has set up rainwater harvesting systems in four places.
Asian Paints manager Pratyush Unnikrishnan said his company had pitched in to set up rainwater harvesting systems as a way to compensate for the water that industries like his consume. Asian Paints has so far helped Rain Centre set up rainwater harvesting systems at seven locations in Chennai. “Ours is a semi-water intensive industry,“ he said. “At a certain point we realised that we need to give back to society and the environment what we take. So we decided to expand our corporate social responsibility activities from education and sanitation to include water conservation.“
Experts say setting up rainwater harvesting systems do not benefit only the institutions in which they are set up but also help replenish groundwater in the areas the institutions are located.
“In Madras Seva Sadhan, for example, collecting rainwater will not only benefit the school but will also help apartments in the vicinity . This is because the rainwater collecting units also allow a certain amount of water to percolate into the ground, thereby raising the water table,“ Sekhar Raghavan said.
Most corporate houses involved in funding rainwater harvesting systems also pro vide the money to maintain them for up to two years.
In 2003, when the state was reeling from an unprecedented water crisis, the AIADMK government made it mandatory for every building in the state to install a rainwater harvesting system. Partly as a result of this, there has been a 50% rise in water level in Chennai over since then and the quality of water had improved significantly .
A recent audit by Rain Centre, however, found that owners of several of these systems had allowed them to fall into disrepair.
With levels in the reservoirs low and groundwater levels dipping, officials are looking to the sky for support.Meanwhile, corporate participation is helping many get through the crisis.
