Rainwater Harvesting by making catchment ponds

Auroville’s success in regenerating a wasteland has been due to its work in water conservation. Since the early years, foresters have carefully planned and made contour bunds, small check dams, and a series of water catchment ponds to prevent soil and water erosion from our plateau. Catching rainwater in catchment ponds not only conserves surface water, but also helps to recharge the aquifers as the water from the ponds slowly percolates into the ground. Catchment ponds or ‘eyries’ as they are locally known. were a traditional rainwater harvesting system in Tamil Nadu. This system has largely fallen into disuse, and many of the village ponds are silted, encroached upon, or overtaken by parasitic vegetation, like Prosopis juliflora. Bobby, who had to lower a pump to extract water from a lower level in the Industrial Zone, lamented that she would not have had to do this if the Alankuppam village catchment pond had been properly maintained.

To battle this bleak scenario, for the last few years Kireet has been working on rainwater conservation in the entire Auroville region. In the past six months or so, he and his team accomplished the following:

– De-silted and enlarged the catchment pond in Siddhartha Forest.

– Improved the catchment area of two existing ponds at Infinity as well as created a third new pond. The three ponds were then connected with overflow channels.

– Cleared a part of the canyon (which acts as a waterway) in Aurosarjan. The work also involved making a spillway, repairing and raising a bund and deepening the basins in the canyon. The water run off from the ditches along the road to Aurosarjan was channeled into the canyon.

– Made a percolation pit with two channels and bunds in Ami, in order to slow-down run-off from Certitude to Forecomers.

– De-silted two ponds near the Visitors’ Centre which had been made in the previous year were to increase their water storage capacity.

– Enlarge two small ponds at Nine Palms to catch the overflow from a larger ‘kolam’ (surface pond). Extra soil from the second pond was used to raise bunds and the spillway of the kolam. Between the two ponds the canal was improved. The kolam itself was de-silted for increasing its storage capacity. At the center of Nine Palms, a small pond was improved and a percolation pit and channel were added.

People greatly appreciate Kireet for continuing the work that had been started by pioneering greenbelters. Greenbelters continue to improve water conservation in the lands that they steward and with the funds they have. But none do it at the scale that Kireet does. Also, what has changed is that while in the early years all this work was done by hired manual labour, now, due to the cost of labour, it is done with hired machinery.