Like most Mumbaikars, who are braving the city’s worst-ever water crisis, residents of New Laxminarayan Co-operative Housing Society in Dadar (West) also faced the ordeal till they decide to take matters in their own hands.
After water supply from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) feel drastically six months back, residents of the Laxminarayan society were forced to shell out Rs4,000 every month for water. To cut down on the inconvenience, all families in the society got together and pooled in money to set up a ringwell and an ozonisation plant to meet their daily water requirements.
“The spending on the ring well and the ozonisation plant was an investment for the future. We got permissions after two months from the BMC to dig the ringwell. After it was built, we got the water from the ringwell tested by ITA laboratories,” said Anjali Mahadeokar, a society resident.
The society, most of whose residents are former Reserve Bank of India employees, was initially disheartened after they discovered that water from the ringwell had bacterial content. But soon they came up with a solution.
“There are ten flats in the society and each spent Rs25,000 to set up an ozonisation plant. We started taking trials and let ozone pass for two hours,” said Ajit Mahadeokar, the society secretary. “It’s a technology used worldwide for purifying water using ozone. It has no side effects unlike chlorination. In fact water is of a high quality as it contains oxygen and is better than even the municipal water.”
Today the society’s ringwell yields 40,000 litres of water every day, which is used in the bathrooms and toilets. “We even have plans to set up a rain water harvesting plant soon,” said Anjali Mahadeokar.
Source : http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_this-dadar-society-has-dug-itself-out-of-the-water-crisis_1349662