Rainwater harvesting and artificial recharging will have to be provided on all the buildings and structures such as toll plaza, wayside amenities and grade separated structures to be developed as a part of the National Highway (NH) corridors.
Henceforth, the locations of rainwater harvesting and artificial recharging along NH will be a part of draft/final Detailed Project Report (DPR).
The locations and design of such structures will have to be based on the rainfall intensity and geo-technical strata and guidelines and norms of the Central Groundwater Board.
The standard operating procedure has been spelled out by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) through a communication to the Chief Secretary of States/UTs and the Principal Secretary/Secretary, Public Works Department dealing with NH and other centrally sponsored schemes, official sourced told The Hindu .
The details of locations of rainwater harvesting and artificial recharging structure will have to be incorporated in Schedule C.
In cases where DPR has been completed, necessary provision for such structures will have to be incorporated in Schedule C by the executive agencies as per requirement.
The MoRTH has asked all the executive agencies to ensure that the arrangements are provided by the contractor and concessionaire.
Before issuance of completion certificate, the agencies will have to ensure that the arrangements have been provided and these are functional and recorded in completion certificate with location chainage. Periodic cleaning and maintenance of the structures and arrangements will also have to be made part of maintenance, engineering procurement construction (EPC) and hybrid annuity model (HAM) contract during the operation period.
Surface run-off
The surface run-off from roads is huge in quantity and needs to be properly managed so that it does not go waste.
The total annual volume of run-off from one km long NH, taking run-off efficiency as 80% is 61,60,000 litres.
Guidelines
Indian Road Congress (IRC) has come up with detailed guidelines on urban drainage to address the large number of infrastructure projects like widening of roads to multi-lane facilities, construction of flyovers, subways and metro in the country.
The MoRTH has said that it should be an endeavour of all the stakeholders, including National Highways Authority of India to contribute towards improving the groundwater table and making available more storage of water.
