Hyderabad: Instead of digging borewells, the government should dig traditional wells of 40-50 feet depth. These would give four times the groundwater post rains than borewells. Borewells in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana State are fast drying up and the governments only have April and May to recharge them.
T. Hanumantha Rao, consultant to the United Nations and former engineer-in-chief of the irrigation department, said that drilling more borewells was not the solution. The government should go for ‘dug wells’ of 40-50 feet (can be dug in one month with machinery and labour).
These wells (storage tanks) should be dug up to the soil zone (leaving the rock zone untouched). This way water from the saturated soil would enter the well. Post rains these would serve as storage tanks and recharge groundwater.
“Instead of tapping water from fissures in rock through borewells, it is better to develop open dug wells in the soil zone where more groundwater would be available than in rock. This was noticed by farmers in Khammam and Chittoor district and they closed their bore wells as they went dry and resorted to dug wells.”
Also, instead of recharge trenches or rainwater harvesting pits, it is preferable to have mini percolations (kunta) of about one-fourth acre for a group of a few existing bore wells, which will provide 100-200 times more seepage area than that of a pit.
There is also no need to filter rainwater runoffs to recharge groundwater; a simple storage like a trench tank, kunta is good enough to recharge groundwater, he said.
