A dry borewell, water logging elsewhere

Last Saturday, I got our borewell in Hyderabad tested for water. There had been no water coming through it for the past couple of years. Parents were obviously concerned, and it had to be fixed. Interestingly, it is rather trivial to dismantle your average bore and pull the pipe out. Our pump was at ground level, and was not a submersible pump.There is a filter at the bottom called “foot fall”; the man at the local borewell store said that there could be 3 issues: The bore went dry, the footfall got rusted, there is dirt in the foot fall.

When the two workers got to our house in the afternoon, it took them about half an hour to dismantle the motor from the bore pipes. They then simply pulled at the pipes, and out they came – all 100 feet of it. And the footfall – absolutely dry. There was no rust, and marginal dirt. There was not even a drop of water;I did not even feel that the cloth tied at the end of the foot fall was dry.

The guy exclaimed that almost everyone in the vicinity of our house had bores going upto 300 feet. It would cost about Rs 70-100K getting such a bore done. We considered our options and decided against it. Besides, in about a couple more years, we would have people digging bores upto a thousand feet. Or maybe we should dig. Who knows, we may reach the other end of earth as we dig our bores. Or better still, find some oil in Anand bagh.

Elsewhere in the city, there are water logging problems. When my in-laws were dropping me at the Kacheguda rlwy station, my FIL lamented that certain parts will be water logged when rains hit us, and at the same time our locality does not have water. I noticed that not one person had left any sort of setback in their homes. Setback is a gap of about 5-10 feet between the residential house and the compound walls. It is equivalent to the lawn in front of US homes. Most metros in India have distinct rules about keeping setbacks. Setbacks also allow rain water to seep back into the ground, replenishing ground water for one, and take away the heavenly downpour to where it needs to go (into the earth). We have about 5-10 feet of setback on different sides of our house; many people seldom have setbacks in Hyd. In Bangalore, it is even worse. I recently visited a house worth Rs 1.4 crore; the guy there had left about 1.5 foot of setback, and had aptly concertized even that space.

Today, there was flooding in Koramangala. Sure enough; it would be all over the media. The residents would crib hajaar about how the storm drains got stuck and the water was logged. The media would lay blame on everyone except the Lord. God, they would do not touch cause TRP benefits are not much.

BTW, I also wonder if the loss of ground water in our area is related to the coca-cola plant that is located barely a 2 Kms. away from our house.