Emboldened by the successful rejuvenation of 16 ancient bawadis (open wells) of the city built during the Adil Shahi rule, the district administration has decided to identify more bawadis in Vijayapura city.
The cleaning of the bawadis, the primary sources of drinking water at one time, was started by M.B. Patil when he was Water Resources and district in-charge Minister in the previous Congress government. Work started in 2017 by identifying the major bawadis in the city which were in bad shape because of people dumping waste in them.
Of them, one of the biggest is Taj Bawadi, which, according to historians, never went dry. The bawadis were not only cleared, but a fence was erected to prevent dumping of waste or immersion of Ganesh idols in them.
Reverse Osmosis (RO) units were installed outside the wells so that people could use filtered water for drinking purposes.
“To initiate the next phase, we have decided to form seven teams of technical experts and engineers to identify the bawadis to be revived. They will have to prepare a detailed report on the funds needed,” said Deputy Commissioner Y.S. Patil. Mr. Patil said there are over 200 bawadis across the city.
The Vijayapura City Corporation will be involved in the task in the second phase of the project too. Its Commissioner, Audram, told The Hindu that the task would be taken up as per the direction of the Deputy Commissioner.
He said in the first phase, RO units were installed to utilise the water. “But this time, we are thinking of giving direct connection to pipelines after cleaning the bawadis. We already have pipelines laid in all the wards of the city. The laying of a new pipeline under the 24x7 drinking water project is under way. If we don’t use the old pipeline, it will become defunct. Hence, we can supply water through the old pipelines when the new pipelines have a problem,” he said.
There is also a plan to use water from the bawadis for government offices and parks. Mr. Audram said that though tests have confirmed that the water from cleaned bawadis is potable, people have developed the notion that the water is hard. “For this reason, we have decided to supply this water for purposes other than drinking. It can be used during the summer when there is shortage of water,” he said.
“We are sure this project will be successful as the same wells supplied water to over 10 lakh people during the Adil Shahi era even during acute drought,” he added.
Even experts believe that instead of spending crores on big drinking water projects, cleaning up the bawadis is a more feasible option.
Two wells are a lifeline
Two open wells that were cleaned have been supplying water in Sakaf Roza locality of Ward 28 through pipeline for 10 years now. While other wards faced drinking water problems in the summer, the people of Sakaf Roza never experienced hardship as the wells did not go dry even in harsh summers.