ABGUS, Hindustan Unilever set up treatment plant project to recycle 40,000L of wastewater
The treatment plant will recycle wastewater for irrigational purposes, groundwater replenishment, and rainwater harvesting.
With the support of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), the Akhil Bhartiya Gramin Uthan Samiti (ABGUS) Tuesday inaugurated a water management project in the Dhingi village of Patiala district, Punjab.
The project aims to recycle wastewater for irrigational purposes, groundwater replenishment, and rainwater harvesting.
The rural areas in India suffer from acute water scarcity for domestic and agricultural purposes, owing to water-intensive crops, low water efficiency, and unregulated groundwater. In fact, water pollution has also effectively decreased the quality of the water in these regions.
At the inauguration of the plant
To change this, ABGUS — a voluntary civil society organisation — working in various areas of social welfare, is continuously working in the fields of water conservation and water management by analysing the need and importance of sustainable water management.
On the successful completion of the project, Rajesh Verma, Chief Functionary and Secretary, Akhil Bhartiya Gramin Uthan Samiti, said, “Benefiting around 350 households and a total of 2,755 people, the project will reduce the usage of freshwater by providing an option of treated water to farmers, aiming at water sustainability with appropriate technologies of Water Recycle-Reuse-Recharge.”
He added that the project has engaged, empowered, and evolved community sustained processes for water management, and strengthened community collectives. ABGUS will jointly work with secondary and territory stakeholders for water sustainability in the village
The organisation proposed the Seechewal Model of wastewater management that will focus on two aspects: first, recycling and reusing the treated wastewater for irrigation, and second, preventing further contamination of groundwater.
Introduced by Sant Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal, the model is a primary treatment used in Seechewal, Punjab, which removes heavy solid particles, oil separation, and remaining material from water.
Under the model, the water wells need to be cleaned regularly, which otherwise produce very poor effluents with high suspended solids content that can be detrimental to the constructed wetland and cause clogging of beds. To ensure continuous effective operation, the accumulative material, therefore, must be emptied periodically.
The project was planned to implement a combination of various processes through four-well systems of wastewater treatment for reuse other than human consumption such as irrigation and gardening.
Edited by Suman Singh
