-
What is this campaign about?
Biome Environmental Trust has been working in the area of rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge for the last couple of decades. The experience has revealed that regular and sustained recharge of groundwater in some parts of Bangalore has resulted in improvement in water quality and increase in the groundwater table.
The campaign aims to motivate individuals / communities / institutions / government to dig / revive / maintain at least 10 lakh (1 million) recharge wells across the city to replenish the water table.
This is a campaign and not a project – the idea is that the city and all its citizens own the campaign and take it forward.
-
When did this campaign start? When will it end?
The initial idea of the campaign came about much earlier (in the early 2000s) but formally, the campaign has been on since July 2015. We estimate that there are already 1.5 lakh wells in Bangalore, including open wells and recharge wells. And more new wells are being dug every day.
Assuming there are 100 teams of well diggers digging at least one well a day each, only 36,500 wells can be dug in a year. That leaves a lot of scope for innovation and scaling. We have a long way to go, and why should we stop at a million wells?