Delhi govt to revive defunct RWHs in schools

New Delhi, Feb 2: To address the issue of water crisis in the national capital,

has decided to revive the "non-functional" rainwater harvesting systems in

to raise the ground-water level.

Around 800 government-run schools have RWH pits and more than 50 per cent of them are non-functional, mostly due to lack of monitoring on part of the previous regime, Delhi government Education coordinator Amit Mishra said.

"The previous Delhi government had invested more than around Rs 12 crore on this project, spending around Rs 1.5 lakh for the construction of each system. The structure also needs a maintenance amount of Rs 4,000 for every site. The entire money seems to have gone to waste," Mishra alleged.

Delhi government officials said a team comprising of engineers, scientists and advisors along with two education coordinators has been formed by Education Minister Manish Sisodia for the exercise.

It will be carried out under the supervision of Rakesh Kumar, scientist and head of NEERI's Mumbai centre and a visiting faculty at IIT Bombay, they said.

As part of the exercise, the team of engineers and education coordinators will inspect four RWHs in different zones which are non-functional, from tomorrow.

They will try to find out the faults in the system and make a report along with recommending steps that could be taken to make them functional again, the officials said.

"The RWH system captures rainwater and transfers it to an underground pit where it passes through filters like gravel, sand and boulders. The purified water then goes deep down and increases the ground water level," Ankit Srivastava, an environment engineer, said.

"The aim is to encourage rainwater conservation and to improve the ground water level," Srivastava said.

PTI