GVMC to upgrade ground water pits

Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) decided to upgrade ground water recharge pits across the city in order to ensure that ground water is conserved for use in summer months. The civic body plans to complete this work by the second week of July. However, some observers raise doubt on the ability of the civic body to complete the work by this time. This is because the corporation will have to deal with the nearly 6,200-odd bore wells in the GVMC limits that do not have water harvesting pits (only 10 percent bore wells have harvesting pits). Further, the corporation will have to deal with over 1,200 existing recharge pits in 50 percent of the apartment complexes in the city, of which nearly half are in urgent need of repairs. What complicates the task of GVMC more is the fact that the remaining 50 percent of apartment complexes and almost 95 percent of the individual houses in the city still do not have water harvesting paraphernalia in place. The corporation is hurrying to set up recharge pits across the city as the much-hoped Godavari pipeline project to bring waters to the city this year got delayed. Funding the project is said to be another constraint as the entire water harvesting plan would reportedly cost in excess of Rs 12 crore, while GVMC is learnt to have collected only around Rs 5-6 crore from apartment owners.