Residential Training on Managing Water and Wastewater in Rural Regions of India

January 31 - February 03, 2023

A 4-day residential training on “Managing Water and Wastewater in Rural Regions of Inda” was organized at Anil Agarwal Environmental Training Institute (AAETI) under Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) by the Rural Water & Waste Management Unit of Centre for Science and Environment from January31 – February 03, 2023. The training programme was tailor made for all the stakeholders working or interested in the field of water and wastewater management.

Training was attended by 22 participants from the states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Gujarat, Nagaland, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab, Odisha, Karnataka and Assam.

As the water sources in rural India majorly depend on groundwater the objective of this training was to cover the sustainability of this source through different technologies. As government plans to bring water to the rural households, it has now become very important to understand the amount of greywater coming out of bathrooms and kitchen and ways to manage this greywater. The Programme also covered this aspect.

Field exposure was also planned so that the training participants get an exposure to recharge structures, their construction and operation and impact too and how to use the filed data for analyzing the potential for groundwater recharge through RS and GIS tool.

The participants were given the exposure to live model projects of decentralized treatment of wastewater and rainwater harvesting at the AAETI campus. The participants were also taken for a visit to our in-house testing laboratory.

The training had a mix of lectures and hands-on activities to prepare a water budget for the village level, planning for greywater management at village and household level and making village action plan for water conservations and recharge using remote sensing and GIS tool. The training sessions were undertaken by internal and external experts.  The speakers of the training were from Centre for Science and Environment, National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (Hyderabad), and Central Groundwater Board.

The Programme helped participants to understand the different aspects of rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge to sustain the groundwater source. Also, participants gained knowledge on the management of greywater at household, community and village level. They were also introduced to the reuse options for treated greywater which will also help in saving the groundwater.

The participants were very positive about the training and overall arrangements in the green.