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Water conservation is one of the major activities of the project. It’s pilot spring rejuvenation project was at Soi village to revive drying spring known as ‘Bolen’ beginning in year 2011. The spring was rejuvenated to perennial flow by 2017.
Digging of recharge pits to harvest rainwater is the main activity. General size of pits is 2 m length x 1 m breadth x 1 m depth which could harvest 2000 litres of rainwater per shower. Pit depth is kept 1 meter only to avoid falling and drowning of wild and semi-domesticated animals such as Bos frontalis ( Mithun).
No particular technique is applied. Wherever plain spaces are available, many pits are combined together but depth of the pits is kept same. Pits are dug on the drainage or run-off line in cascading manner so that run-off water could be interrupted at intervals. A master pit of size roughly 15 m X 2m X 1.5 m is dug at the lowest elevation so that overflows from all pits from higher elevation could be finally collected.
The original target was to dig roughly 1000 number of pits of same size but with 250 pits dug, the spring got rejuvenated. Pit digging is a continuous process in the project.
Youths from the neighboring villages are involved in pit digging to generate part time employment.
It was observed that when the pit is fully filled after a shower, it took nearly four days for the water to completely percolate into the soil sub-surface.
The work of digging pits were outsourced to youths of neighboring villages and floating laborers by paying sum ranging from Rs. 2000.00 to Rs. 7000.00 per pit depending on the size of the pit and the master pit @ Rs. 25000.00.
In a span of seven (7) years, 250 numbers of small and big size pits were dug up in the springshed area which resulted in stoppage of drying process in the winter months.
a composite project on water, forest and bio-diversity conservation
