What is Rainwater Harvesting System?
‘Rainwater Harvesting’ is a widely used term covering all those techniques whereby rain is intercepted and used ‘close’ to where it first reaches the earth. The term has been applied to arrangements to cause rainfall to percolate the ground rather than run off its surface, to forms of flood control, to the construction of small reservoirs to capture run-off water so that it can be used for cattle or micro-irrigation and to the collection of runoff from roofs and other impermeable surfaces. Thus, roof water harvesting is a subset of rainwater harvesting, albeit an important one. The hilly villages in Nepal have been using this technique since many years for different purposes. The water can be made drinkable after some simple purification plant installed.
What is Plastic Pond Concept?
The project concept is to collect the excess rainwater in a pond lined with the UV-resistant plastic liner. For this, people will dig a pond of different sizes and capacity. The overflow water is collected here and it can be used in the future mainly for the irrigation purposes and kitchen gardening. Plastic liners are most commonly used in the villages to collect the rainwater. These plastic liners are ultraviolet ray resistant and chemically treated, which means these do not easily degrade due to the overexposure in sun and rain (Weathering). These plastics are found easily in the local markets as per farmer`s demand and in size and color variety. These are the cheapest and easiest method for water collection. The plastic pond is designed to hold more than 35,000 liters of rainwater at a time.
Water Demand in the villages in Nepal:
A study shows household size of rural areas of Nepal is 6 in average and a family with 6 members uses 10 Gagris of water in a day for drinking, cooking and animal purpose. 1 GAGRI equals 20 liters of water. So, total water consumption is 200 liters. Roof area of a house in rural area of Nepal is about 30 m2 to 45 m2 in general. The water demand can be met for 5 months fully from the rainfall. For another two months rainwater is quite deficit .So the jar/pond should be sized for storing water for this period. If the amount of water available should be increased for this period, we should provide the larger area of the catchments. So catchments may also be designed for rainwater harvesting. The total amount of water is not available for collection for drinking purpose as the water for first some minutes should be allowed to flush the catchments.
Why hilly villages in Nepal need Rainwater Harvesting Systems (RHS)?
Hilly Villages in Kavre District lies at about 1400 m. above the sea level and at the hill. With the water sources lying in the bottom of the hills, it suffers much during the dry seasons. There are some gravity-fed water taps available in the village but they almost dry up during the dry season. People in the village are mostly farmers and most of them have Water-Buffaloes which they rear for the milk. It drinks a lot of water (approx. 100 liters a day). So, a normal villager uses almost about 200 Liters. water in a day for domestic purposes. For 20 Liters of water in a vessel called “Gagri”, women in the village spend almost 45 minutes. Half a day, women lose just carrying water. The Village have almost enough rainfall during the rainy season. So, rainwater harvesting system is one of the best alternative and nature friendly. As the village is at the mid hill and the sources are down in the bottoms, there is a problem in pumping the water up due to the frequent power cuts, non-perennial sources and other reasons.
What is the total project cost?
Rotaract Club of Budol along with Rotary Community Corps Simalchaur is supporting the farmers by distributing them Silpaulin Plastics which is special made plastic UV resistant and warranted against damage made by sun and rain. Each of the house receives (30*40) =1200 Sq. Ft. of the plastic liner which can hold 35,000 liters or more rainwater for household use. Farmers will dig the pond and manage the gutters and pipe on their own. Everything Organic Nursery will providing the additional Technical support and Organic Farming Training for the Local farmer. In this stage, the project includes 20 houses in the village to create a success story among the farmers that the solution is within them and very simple. The project will provide the plastic liners to the farmers and some organic training days according to the requirement of the farmers. This will be like a fire in the pile of hay among the poor villagers as many of them will be thinking of utilizing the nature power at the most.
The Total Project cost is $5200. Farmers in the villages are contributing $2200 of the total project cost including cash contributions, labor charge and material charge. The donations collection will be of $3000 from Rotary Clubs, NGOs, INGOs, individuals and other organizations.
How can you donate?
We welcome individuals/organisations/clubs to participate in this project. Your small help makes a big difference. If you and your organisations are interested in making this change, you can always email us.
Email: skrissh_phoolbari@hotmail.com
You can easily donate in our community project partner EVON`s PayPal account. Please email us to confirm with the donations at jim.danisch@gmail.com orskrissh_phoolbari@hotmail.com. Fund raising is open now. Attached below is the proposal for rainwater harvesting system which has more details on what we did and what we are doing in the next phase with cost estimations.
You can download and share it. Rainwater Harvesting in Phoolbari Proposal
Video Documentary: