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Sustainable agriculture
Women empowerment
Drinking water
Rain water harvesting
 
            
 
Home>>Programmes>>Rain water harvesting  
Wayanad has been facing severe water scarcity since 2000. The rainfall pattern has been changed during the past 10 years drastically due to changes in vegetative cover as well as due to the global warming. There was a shortfall of 1000 mm rainfall during the past ten years. One of the main reasons for water scarcity is the low ground water recharging taking place due to difference in cropping pattern as well as less soil conservation measures taken up by farmers. Wayanad once having 40,000 hec paddy fields have now come down to 9000 hec. Rice fields hold water for 90 days in a cultivating season.
This helped immense recharge of ground water in the region in the past. To ensure availability of water to all, water-harvesting measures have to be adopted. Apart from soil and water conservation initiatives giving easy access to water is also very important. In this regard, RASTA promoted rainwater-harvesting systems in Wayanad. RASTA has constructed 10 rainwater harvesting structures in ten schools with a total capacity of 4,50,000 liters and xx systems of 7500 liters capacity in households. 15 RWH systems with a total capacity of 6,75,000 is under construction in 15 schools. In all the structures, the excess water is recharged to the open wells nearby.

Recently a new method of construction for RWH called brick lined ferro-cement technology has been developed and popularized in the region. This technology has long durability compared to Ferro cement technology and suitable for large volume structures.