Rain Harvesting Turns Apartment Into Oasis Amid Drought
Not so at Kukatpally Housing Board (KPHB) Colony, Asia’s biggest housing hub and a teeming mini‑city of 2.5 lakh residents.
Hyderabad:While Hyderabad bakes under a brutal water crisis, MNK Vittal Central Court Apartment in Bhoiguda, Secunderabad, remains an oasis. With 27 rainwater harvesting pits and two injection borewells, its 350‑plus residents keep groundwater steady at 250 feet—defying the citywide drought.
Not so at Kukatpally Housing Board (KPHB) Colony, Asia’s biggest housing hub and a teeming mini‑city of 2.5 lakh residents. Most borewells deeper than 1,000 feet have been dry for a month, forcing desperate reliance on exorbitant tankers. “It’s hellish—families queue at odd hours for a pot of water, kids miss baths, and we’re rationing drops like gold,” lamented Lalitha, a Phase 7 resident and software engineer. Another resident added: “We don’t even get water for cooking and depend entirely on tankers, sometimes paying ₹3,000 per load—it’s killing us.” Residents have appealed to Cyberabad Municipal Corporation to dig hundreds of pits and a few injection borewells this summer to prevent mass migration in the near future.
Central Court itself faced similar agony in 2014, when its two borewells dried up and residents spent ₹4.5–5 lakh every year on summer supplies. At the time, Hyderabad Metro works were underway in front of the apartment, creating huge pits and nuisance. “We convinced them to help us by drilling two injection borewells in front of our apartment, and they readily agreed. It changed our fate,” recalled Dr Gangone Hanmandlu, president of the Central Court Apartment.
Dr Hanmandlu, former civil surgeon and RMO at Osmania, Gandhi and Niloufer Hospitals, says he used his administrative experience to spearhead a permanent solution. Twenty‑five more harvesting pits were dug around the apartment, while the Metro team helped sink 200‑foot injection borewells in 50‑foot pits, packed with concrete‑sand layers to channel road and terrace runoff. Additional pits were piped from rooftops across their 600‑sq‑yard plot. “Since then, our 300‑foot borewell has never failed. Every drop counts,” he said with pride. Their association also installed 36 KW solar panels on the rooftop, providing corridor power free of cost during outages.
The success story has drawn official praise. In‑charge minister Ponnam Prabhakar sent kudos, and zonal commissioner Manga Tayaru toured the site on Tuesday, lauding the residents’ rainwater conservation efforts as “gold standard.
