Pune: Residents of the Kumar Peninsula society, on Baner-Pashan Link Road, learnt their lesson the hard way when they coughed up almost Rs2 lakh for water tankers last year.The society in 2016 installed three recharge structures to harvest rainwater from the terrace, ground, as well as the water that flows down a nearby hill. The water thus collected is channelled into a 105ft deep filtration pit."This year we did not have to order a single water tanker," said Gulab Patil, the 74-year-old chairman of the society.Patil shared the success story of his society at a seminar on rainwater harvesting organized by city-based Mission Groundwater in association with the Pune Municipal Corporation at Pandit Bhimsen Joshi Auditorium in Aundh."The aim of the seminar was to reach out to residential societies and explain to them the need to adopt rainwater harvesting. Groundwater is depleting fast, but the rate at which it is being recharged is slow, so we are trying to create awareness on this," said Ravindra Sinha, founding member of Mission GroundwaterThe event was attended by around 200 people from 120 residential societies from across the city.John D'Souza, secretary of Kunal Icon Society in Pimple Saudagar, said after the seminar, "Since February this year we have sent more than Rs4 lakh to buy water through tankers. This is a lot of money, so we are planning to harvest rainwater and hope to become tanker-free by next year," he said. The society has 29 buildings of which 15 are equipped with water-harvesting systems. They plan to equip the remainder with such systems too.Dr Himanshu Kulkarni, executive director of Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, said, "Groundwater is the last mile for people in terms of dependence, but it is extremely trivialized. Aquifers should be looked at as water banking systems, where you have an account of what you put in as recharge and what you take out. "He also recommended that groundwater recharge should be done at a community level with the participation of public and government.Dr Shashank Deshpande, groundwater scientist, spoke about the need for artificial groundwater recharge in the city, and how societies play an important role through rainwater harvesting. He also advocated the need to remove concrete roads and build permeable pavement blocks to allow rainwater to percolate.

Stay updated with all the Pune Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.