The New Indian Express 26.08.2009
‘Rainwater harvesting a must'
BANGALORE: Rainwater harvesting is a prerequisite to meet the growing water needs of the urban cities, observed U R Rao, former chairman of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) at the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium premises on Tuesday .After inaugurating the planetarium’s rainwater harvesting project here on Tuesday, Rao said that in all the major cities in the world, 60 per cent of their water needs is met by recycled water .
He did some number crunching on the occasion too. “The current urban and rural population ratio of the country is 35:65 and around 70 per cent of the growth has been seen in urban population .
Right now, there are 400 million people who are living in the urban areas and in the coming future it would be a great challenge to meet their water needs.” The rain water harvesting project at planetarium is estimated to cost around Rs 11.62 lakh and plans to harvest around 30.16 lakh litre rainwater annually. The project is being supported by Bangalore Association for Science Education, Technology Informatics Design Endeavour and other Charity partners ADOBE and CAF.