Hyderabad: Hyderabad’s once depleting groundwater reserves are witnessing a dramatic revival, thanks to an aggressive rainwater harvesting mission that has transformed thousands of households into water conserving units. What was once a concrete jungle struggling to absorb even a drop of rainfall is now turning into a model city for sustainable groundwater restoration.
The Water Board’s ambitious ‘Every Home a Rainwater Pit’ drive, launched a year ago, has begun delivering remarkable results. By encouraging and enforcing the construction of percolation pits across residential and commercial premises, the initiative has successfully pushed groundwater levels up by three to nine metres on average, compared to last year’s measurements.
From tanker dependence to self sufficiency
For years, residents relied heavily on water tankers for daily needs, especially during summer when borewells ran dry. However, the latest data reveals a 12 per cent to 50 per cent drop in tanker demand across several divisions, clearly indicating that groundwater revival is directly reducing water stress at the household level.
Intelligent intervention and visible impact
Hyderabad receives 85 to 89 cm of rainfall annually, yet only 0.75 per cent to 0.95 per cent of it was previously percolating into the ground, with the rest draining into stormwater channels and eventually going to waste.
Recognising this inefficiency, Water Board Managing Director K Ashok Reddy, soon after taking charge, surveyed water stressed colonies and identified drying borewells as a core problem.
His strategic solution capture rain where it falls and sends it back underground has proven both practical and powerful. Groundwater rebounds across multiple zones.
Areas that had groundwater levels falling to depths of 14 to 28 metres last summer are now showing recovery to as high as 2 to 11 metres, signaling strong percolation gains. Officials attribute this surge not only to higher than normal rainfall this monsoon but also to the wide scale installation of soak pits across households, gated communities, and institutions.
Mandatory harvesting for long term relief
To ensure sustained impact, the Water Board has now made rainwater pits compulsory for all properties with plots above 300 square metres. Letters have been issued to GHMC and municipal bodies to enforce this regulation before construction approvals. Over 42,000 premises that booked more than 20 tankers monthly were identified and over 16,000 were served notices for not having harvesting pits. Abandoned borewells are also being converted into recharge wells, making every existing structure part of the conservation network.
‘Rainwater pits today, no need for future mega water projects’
Water Board Managing Director K Ashok Reddy stresses that if every household adopts this model, future large scale drinking water projects may no longer be required. Instead of spending crores to pump Krishna river water back into the city, citizens can store the same water beneath their own homes. Hyderabad’s rainwater harvesting mission is not just a policy it is a people’s movement.
When every household becomes a reservoir, every borewell becomes a lifeline. If this momentum continues, water scarcity may soon become a thing of the past, replaced by a future of self replenishing, sustainable urban water security.
