Groundwaterrecharge

Ground water recharge
Underground water is one of the important sources of water in urban areas. With increasing urbanization, underground water has been indiscriminately exploited causing depletion in water table and water availability. It is very evident from the number of failing bore wells / open wells that it is unsustainable to pump out water from wells without recharging the same from the rainwater. To reverse the trend or to reduce the effect of over exploitation, ground water recharge need to be taken up in large scale at residential and institutional buildings.
There are many methods of ground water recharge. Following are few methods for recharging ground water using rainwater from rooftops of buildings.
a. Reused plastic barrels method
b. Direct recharge through Open wells and Bore wells
c. Infiltration Gallery for large buildings
d. How to build an Infiltration Gallery?
e. Roads / Trenches
f. Parks and Open spaces
g. Layouts
a) Reused plastic barrels method
This cost effective and simple method has been developed by A.R. Shivakumar. In this method, Overflow of rainwater from the storage structure and water from the roof other than the roof connected to the storage structure may be allowed to flow through a �PopUp Filter�. This filter will filter floating elements and to some extent the silt coming in the water. Relatively cleaner water comes out of the filter and is allowed to flow into ground water recharge gallery.

The ground water recharge gallery is created by using reused plastic oil/chemicals barrels (blue colored drums sold on the road side for construction activities etc.).
These barrels are of around 200 to 220lts. capacity each and are quite strong in their construction. One side of the barrel (top or bottom), which is circular in shape, is cut open.
Depending on the total roof area connected to this infiltration gallery, more number of barrels are used for ground water recharge. The barrels are buried...