Good blog post, though some problems with this "water swap" exist. In this particular case in Bangalore, the water received no kind of treatment and no water testing was done so adverse developments in future are to expected. The initial plan was to led the waste water through an open rivulet but over time they decided to dig a pipe and transfer the water through there. So natural cleaning was not really happening. But nevertheless, the impact and the perceptions about this project were very positive. People were not allowed to take the water directly out of the tank but the main idea was the recharge of the tubewells in the area. And it worked. Farmers I talked to were quite happy with the project and started cultivating cash crops giving them much more money. But not only farmers benefited. People came from far away to get fodder from the area, specially during summer when the whole area goes dry.
Conflicts also involved different villages opening the pipe illegally because in their views their tanks needed water, too.
The whole idea is great though. But it needs a lot of planning, stakeholder discussions and ongoing control measurements which were all not in place in that Bangalore project. But we could take it and the lessons we learned to make it work at another project site.
Good blog post, though some problems with this "water swap" exist. In this particular case in Bangalore, the water received no kind of treatment and no water testing was done so adverse developments in future are to expected. The initial plan was to led the waste water through an open rivulet but over time they decided to dig a pipe and transfer the water through there. So natural cleaning was not really happening. But nevertheless, the impact and the perceptions about this project were very positive. People were not allowed to take the water directly out of the tank but the main idea was the recharge of the tubewells in the area. And it worked. Farmers I talked to were quite happy with the project and started cultivating cash crops giving them much more money. But not only farmers benefited. People came from far away to get fodder from the area, specially during summer when the whole area goes dry.
Conflicts also involved different villages opening the pipe illegally because in their views their tanks needed water, too.
The whole idea is great though. But it needs a lot of planning, stakeholder discussions and ongoing control measurements which were all not in place in that Bangalore project. But we could take it and the lessons we learned to make it work at another project site.