This UP village puts its greywater to good use to combat local flooding, recharge groundwater

Manpur Ojha, a village of around 1,400 households, stands tall in the Bilaspur block of Rampur district in exhibiting an economic and effective way of managing the groundwater.

Officially, every household is connected to a tap under the Jal Jeevan Mission of Union Ministry of Jal Shakti (water resources) — but still half of the households have one handpump in their premises. Apart from that, there are 1,100 handpumps constructed across the village for the communities.

As per the government records, the groundwater for the taps under JJM are also extracted from the groundwater. No wonder the groundwater levels plunged by three metres. 

Since five years, groundwater is found at 48 metres below the ground. As on one hand, the village was thinking of replenishing its groundwater, on the other hand the huge volume of greywater generated from the kitchen, bathroom and washing areas needed to be managed.

Officially, water is supplied at 55 litres per capita per day, which shows that 36  litres of greywater is generated per day per capita (the thumb rule is 70 per cent of the water used is converted to the greywater). But there are individual and community handpumps all over the village. Excess water flowing out during the use of these handpumps also add to the village's greywater.

Earlier, a large volume of greywater used to flow into the open drains in the village, which were chocked with solid waste. As a result, just a short spell of rain used to cause waterlogging.

Moroever, many households lacked proper bathing and washing structures, as a result of which water stands for a long time outside the houses. Villagers raised concerns of foul smell and mosquitoes.

In 2022, Manpur Ojha Gram Panchayat, along with Bilaspur block officials, took an initiative to manage greywater at the household level under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen). Since then, greywater from washing, bathing and handpump directly goes first into the silt chamber which has a size of 0.5 m x 0.5 m and depth of 0.3-0.45 m.

After grit and suspended solids are removed in this chamber, the water directly goes into the kitchen garden created wherever the households found space on their premises. Mostly 60 per cent of the water goes to the kitchen garden and the remaining is diverted to soakpits — of 1.2 m diameter and 1 m depth. The soak pits are economic and done under MGNREGS.

Household pits costs Rs 10,000 and the community soak pits cost Rs 14,000 which can tackle greywater from over 1,000 households, said Alok Kumar Saxena, assistant development officer, Bilaspur block, Rampur.

“We were made aware of the management of greywater from the community meetings in our village. We have in total 150 soakpits at household level and 11 at community level in our village. Almost every household in our village have a kitchen garden. The toilets are connected to leach pits. We have planted ornamental flowers and vegetables such as bottle guard and lemon to use at our houses,” said Dayanand, farmer and resident of Manpur Ojha, said. 

At present, the pits built in 2022 are in working condition, added Saxena. "If any maintenance work is required, we along with the technical team work on the same. The funds from the fifth State Finance Commission and MGNREGS are utilised for operation and maintenance." 

The low-cost model for the management of greywater has been efficient. The system hardly requires any maintenance — only the media in the silt chambers and soak pits need to be replaced every seven to eight years. As the construction is new, not much maintenance has been done in a long time, Saxena shared.

The groundwater level has also improved by five metres in two years, said the 38-year-old village hear Virat Kirtunia. Before 2022, during summers, the yield of our handpumps used to reduce to half but now we get a good yield throughout the year, he added.

In villages where groundwater usage is very high, there is an immediate need to manage the huge amount greywater coming out of washing areas and kitchens. Manpur Ojha shows how treated greywater can be used for irrigation of the kitchen garden and also for recharging the depleting groundwater after appropriate treatment.