Conservation of water

• India is still not in the 'water stressed' category but the day is not far when we will be facing a water crisis.
• We need to think of various ways to strictly avoid wastage.

• To prevent further shortages, households, communities, and private industries must adopt water saving practices.       

• Households can save water by promptly fixing leaks or dripping taps.

• Although the water lost from leaks may not seem like much, it adds up to quite a lot.
• A dripping tap can result in a loss of up to 72 litres of water every day.
• Recycling of water is very important.
• We could start even in our homes.

For example:

• Water used in cleaning utensils can be used to water plants in the garden instead of being poured down the drain.

Scenario during floods

• A lot of water is lost during floods.
• Dams, reservoirs, and embankments would help to check floods and the flow of water.
• By improving the methods of irrigating the fields, instead of filling up the entire field with water, farmers can be taught the method of watering the roots of plants drop by drop.

A typical dripper

• Israel, which is a water-scarce country, has come up with this innovative technique called drip irrigation, which is the method of watering the roots of the plants drop by drop.
• This saves up to one-third of the water that would otherwise be lost during spray applications.
• Further, it enables farmers to double harvests using the same amount of water.
• In other countries, such as Egypt, some solutions suggested are improvements in water efficiency and moving away from water-intensive crops.

Representation of typical water harvesting system

• By building rainwater harvesting systems, it helps us to use rainwater directly.
• These structures are designed to help capture and store rainwater during the monsoon season, and serves as a source of drinking and irrigation water during the rest of the year.
• In the southern states of India, tanks, artificial ponds, and reservoirs have been constructed as part of the water harvesting system.
• These do not make a significant contribution to the total freshwater resource in India, but water harvesting systems have a strong impact on a local scale.