Thread by @biome_trust

Here are some ways you can make your layout/apartment/gated community more water sustainable...🧵

Here’s the challenge:

In a layout, how can we convert water from an individual, private resource, to an #equitable resource?

Imagine everybody using multiple straws to procure water from the same glass.

Is there an alternative to everybody sinking a #borewell, competing with each other to draw #water? How can this alternative be #sustainable?

1. Turn #groundwater into a common pool resource

This means that no individual can sink a borewell. Instead, the community has 3 borewells and everybody equitably shares the water in the aquifer.

2. Each resident takes responsibility for recharge

Everyone collects #rainwater and puts it into the ground, to recharge the aquifer they are receiving and consuming water.

Each plot can dig a recharge well. What you now have is sustainability through demand management.

3. Fix water meters

When you put a price on water consumption, you make sure no family in the layout over-consumes. This way you ensure that water is equitably among all residents.

Pricing, demand management, understanding the hydrology and recharge and communitising the resource thus become crucial for a water-sensitive layout.

But it doesn’t just stop with water use. It can extend to #reuse too.

4. #Recycle the wastewater generated by the layout at decentralized wastewater treatment plants

This can then be reused for non-drinking purposes by all residents.

This way, understanding shallow aquifers, rainfall patterns, recharge rates and percolation makes designing an #urban layout a lot more sustainable.