But this seems to be a tall task as the civic authorities would have to
deal with the nearly 6200-odd bore wells in the GVMC limits that do not
have water harvesting pits (only 10% bore wells have harvesting pits)
as well as over 1200 existing recharge pits in 50% of the apartment
complexes in the city, of which nearly half are in urgent need of
repairs. This even as the remaining 50% of apartment complexes and
almost 95% of the individual houses in the city still do not have water
harvesting paraphernalia in place.

According to GVMC sources,
the civic authorities were banking on the Godavari pipeline to bring
waters to the city this year but as the project got delayed there was a
mad scramble to put up recharge pits across the city.

Interestingly, by GVMC commissioner MV Satyanarayana’s own admission,
implementing the water harvesting project in individual houses was
impossible this monsoon. He, however, expressed confidence about its
implementation in residential high rise
buildings. “Water harvesting is compulsory and we have ensured that
builders take it up seriously. Money is not a problem as we are
collecting Rs 5,000 to 10,000 from each high rise. The only problem is
that buildings with harvesting pits do not know how to keep them in
working condition, which is where GVMC will play a major role,” the GVMC
commissioner said, pointing out that for the 6200-odd bore wells
without harvesting pits GVMC had already allotted a particular sum as
corpus fund.

Though GVMC authorities said they were keen to
implement the project on a war footing, concerned individuals and
organisations feel the civic body was staring at mission impossible.
According to Vikram Rathod of NGO Mission Akash Ganga, though GVMC would
have collected around Rs 5-6 crore from apartment owners, the entire
water harvesting plan would cost in excess of Rs 12 crore.

According to A V Ramana Rao, secretary, Vizag Apartment Residents
Welfare Association, though on paper close to 50% of the apartment
complexes in the city have water harvesting pits, half of these have not
been built as per stipulations and were virtually redundant. “GVMC
needs to take up this project on a war footing and should be more
proactive in conducting awareness programmes on a large scale to involve
people’s bodies as it is mandatory for every structure built over more
than 200 square yards to implement water harvesting,” Rao said.

Blaming GVMC, Ground Water Board, real estate developers as well as the general public
for the entire water mess, Rathod of Mission Akash Ganga said, “In most
cases, either an old septic tank or a temporary pit is shown as a
water-harvesting pit to get the necessary permissions for construction.
The general public too seems to be least bothered about these things
when the going is good and rain water fills up our reservoirs. In some
cases, residents of multi-storeyed apartments have refused to implement
this rule because it would cost nothing less than Rs 18,000 for a proper
harvesting pit to be dug up.”

However, Rathod pointed out that
the only good thing the GVMC had done for water conservation was
cracking down on indiscriminate digging of bore wells by private
builders.