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This monsoon, top hotels such as The Leela, Taj and ITC Maratha are using their roof-tops for a different purpose – for rain-water harvesting.
The project to use roof-tops to collect rain-water has been implemented in Leela's hotels across Mumbai, Kovalam, Bangalore, Goa, Udaipur and Chennai, said Mr Ravindra Kumar Singh, Leela's Senior Vice-President – Projects and Engineering.
Capacity
The storage capacity provided for collection of rain water is 300 cu metres installed in Kovalam as well as Chennai.
“In Goa and Bangalore, the storage has been ordered and will be installed shortly of the same capacity of 300 cu. metres.
In Mumbai, we have a natural storage facility of the capacity higher than 600 cu metres,” Mr Singh added.
How it works
Rain-water harvesting is a green initiative involving a catchment area to collect rainwater and divert it to storage tanks or groundwater recharge pits.
While not typically designed to act as the main source of water, a rainwater harvesting system can help offset the costs of irrigation, promote conservation, provide an alternative to watering restrictions during a severe drought and, in many ways, reduce flooding and clean streams.
Rainwater is collected using gutters to channel water from the roof to a storage tank or a barrel rather than to the ground, sidewalks and streets.
The stored water can then be released gradually.
ITC Maratha
At Mumbai's ITC Maratha, the roof-top has a catchment area of 600 sq metres.
The rainwater gets directly collected into its raw water tank, with a capacity of 130 KL. Ultraviolet-rays resistant water pipes, of about four inches diameter, transport this water to filters that help remove impurities such as micro-organisms.
This clear water is then stored in tanks and used for non-critical purposes such as cleaning, for example.
The hotel, in its second phase, plans to expand the catchment area with an additional 600 sq metres for the rainwater harvesting facility, in a month's time.
Expansion plan
As hotels adopt greener initiatives, the Taj group of hotels too says it has rainwater harvesting facilities at its properties across the country.
In fact, ITC Maratha, as part of its eco-friendly initiatives, has also installed odour-free organic waste converter (OWC), capable of recycling 600 kg organic waste every day.
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