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Rejuvenate India Movement |
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Vellore Srinivasan's work on Water Harvesting and Flood Control
Water Harvesting Structures so far
So far 6 ponds have been desilted and 15 check dams constructed on the Vellore Hills. The District Forest Officer (DFO) was quite excited when he visited the hill, and has decided to hand over the Hill Fort to Vellore Exnora for restoration, promising full support for the work.Srinivasan's work has been mainly done at Kalamburon Kotai hill near Kammovan Pettai. Major portion of the work started when we sent 60 students from the National Technical Training Foundation, Chennai (NTTF) for 'rural exposure'. This was followed by 40 students form a Local ITI and 54 students from NTTF Vellore
Height of the hill : 1500 ft (Takes a good one hour to climb)
Total number of water harvesting
sites available on the Hill :13
Number of sites desilted : 6
Plastered : 1
For the plastering 280 bags of sand 45 bags cement were used. These bags, each weighing about 20 Kgs were carried up the Hill by the NTTF and local school students.
4 workers have been engaged from village Kammovan Pettai Village, of whom one was a goat heard who was grazing 400 goats on the hill slopes but now helps stop the grazing on the hills.
101 students involved in hill restoration
The Nettur Technical Training Institute (NTTF) students have been regularly camping in the Vellore Hills and participating in the hill restoration. So far, NTTF-Chennai students have camped and worked for 7 days, NTTF-Vellore students for 8 days and ITI-Katpadi students for 2 days. In the first week of March, 101 students (31 girls + 90 boys) will be desilting more ponds and building check dams along with the villagers.Funding
NTTF gave Rs.15,600 for setting up a village camp for their students to stay. The Forest Depart gave Rs.14,000 for seedlings and seeds and Srinivasan contributed Rs.400/- to make a total of Rs. 30,000/-. Srinivasan applied to the Government for project fund of Rs.1,20,000 for the desilting project and showed the Rs.30,00,000/- as people's contribution for the project. The Government contributed the balance 90,000/- to make up the total project cost Rs.1.20 lakhs.Out of this Srinivasan is paying 4 workers at the rate of Rs.1500 eachfor three months.
Their duty : Stopping burning of bushes and grazing on the hills slopes - raising nursery of local plant species - maintenance of the fort on the hill top and desilting
Another two tanks to be taken up shortly for desilting (With a team of students from Bangalore NTTF. They seem to be emerging as a strong resource for this Community-private partnership desilting Activity)
Possible impact on farming at the foot hills needs to be studied previously farming activities were carried on only for 4 months in a year. The project is only 4 months old and so no conclusions on benefits can be drawn now.
His next move waste land development for grazing.
His ultimate objective - There are a total of 213 hillocks below 1500 ft, 25 hillocks above 1500 ft.and one above 2300 ft. The total length of the hill range is 25 km in length - water harvesting and greening on the entire hill range.
Student Partnership Worldwide
The most recent development: Student Partnership Worldwide has started working with Srinivasan, and wants to bring volunteers to Vellore every year. (Be sure to learn about SPW from the website.) 5 students from UK have been working with Srinivasan (3 months from January) in schools in the villages (covered by the Hill Project) to help them with interesting ways of teaching children in schools, while also participating in the hill project. For the next 2-3 months, a total of 145 students will be working on the hills and in the surrounding villages on various projects. Now that students camping has become a regular affair, Srinivasan has purchased cooking utensils for Rs. 25,000 for 400 people. courtesy: The additional district collector, who is by now, a good friend of Srinivasan.3 full-time village workers
3 villagers have now been employed full time for the next 4 months, who will help reconstruct the fort, collect seeds of native plant species, prevent fire, prevent cattle grazing, spread soil removed from the ponds (desilted) on exposed rocks, cut dry grass and spread on the soil. Srinivasan's experience in Cascadia Quest (Seattle), where he gained experience in decommissioning logging roads on mountains and recreating forest cover, he says, is coming very useful here.Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/rim/public_html/national/tamilnadu/volunteers/srinivasan_water.php on line 101
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