Village rainwater harvesting system stores enough for a year

The shortage of clean water in many parts of the world is a topic we’ve seen addressed on several occasions before—such as by the Hippo Water Roller and the PlayPump, to name just two examples. Recently another solution caught our eye, not least because it just won this year’s Energy Globe World Award. Akash Ganga, or River from the Sky, is a sustainable system that channels rooftop rainwater from every house in a village through gutters, and then pipes it to a network of multitier, underground reservoirs. Currently implemented in six drought-prone villages in the Churu District of Rajasthan, the system captures enough rainwater to meet the drinking needs of an entire village for 12 months. Aakash Ganga is the brainchild of social entrepreneur and Sustainable Innovations president BP Agrawal, who also won the USD 100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability earlier this year. The system currently supplies some 10,000 people with fresh water, and the Government of Rajasthan has signed a letter of intent to implement Aakash Ganga in 50 villages to serve another 125,000 people. A100-village plan is being evaluated for implementation as a public-private-community partnership or social enterprise by 2011 or 2012. A video demonstrates the system in action. According to the World Health Organization, 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Time to get involved and help put an end to that problem? (Related: Buy a bottle of wine and donate clean water.) Spotted by Murtaza Patel