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.