The Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) has installed rainwater harvesting systems at 70 of its properties including office buildings, schools, community halls and gymnasiums etc.
The civic body’s city engineer Shivkumar Vanjari said the NMC has been taking initiatives to install rainwater harvesting systems at all its buildings in a bid to increase the groundwater level since last year.
“We have installed a rainwater harvesting system at the NMC headquarters at Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan, all six divisional offices, community halls, municipal schools, primary health centres, fire stations and more,” said Vanjari. “During monsoon last year, we stored 12.38 lakh litre of rainwater through rainwater harvesting systems at 70 buildings of the civic body,” he said and added that the NMC is now planning to install rainwater harvesting systems at more properties soon.
NMC’s action came after divisional commissioner Radhakrishna Game — the chairperson of the Bombay high court-appointed high powered committee on Godavari river pollution — had directed the civic administration to install the rainwater harvesting system starting at its own buildings. Game had also directed the district collectorate and Zilla Parishad of Nashik to install rainwater harvesting systems at their own buildings/properties. Game’s directives had come after environmentalists had expressed the urgent need to recharge groundwater.
Rajesh Pandit, an environmentalist and petitioner of the Godavari river pollution petition in the Bombay HC, said there is a need to focus on recharging groundwater. “We need to save every single water of rain from being wasted. Rainwater harvesting is the need of the hour. Local and government authorities need to start this movement at their level. They should first install rainwater harvesting systems at their own office buildings so that they can encourage the city residents to take up groundwater recharging,” said Pandit.