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The city's reservoirs present a deserted look. The wells and bore wells in Chennai are becoming
museum pieces. And, water is becoming a rare commodity in this city. To counter the challenges presented in this regard, the
Stella Maris College for women has come out fighting. The college is in an upswing mood with the introduction of the Stella Maris Centre for Water Resources Study which would mainly stress on providing answers to some of the problems and challenges concerning water.
Accordingly, as a first step in this regard, an exhibition, open to all, was organised on the 30th of August with posters directing the state, people and all concerned on the different aspects of water such as ground replenishment and water harvesting and the various measures to be adopted in this regard.
According to Dr Geetha Swaminathan, an organising member and a faculty of Chemistry, said the centre would reach out to the public, all strata involved, in creating awareness on the usage of water and more importantly recycling of the same. She added that a recycling plant would be soon set up inside the college to recycle the water discharged from the
bathrooms and toilets and reuse the water.
She added that a data collection center would be soon set up, requesting students of the college initially and the general public later to bring water samples of the area of their residence which would be biologically assessed by the departments of chemistry and biology of the college. Later, minor treatment, if necessary and possible, would be advised to improve the water
quality. This would also facilitate the efforts in studying the pattern of water usage in the city, she added.
Dr Geetha also proposed a number of action plans in this regard such as national level seminars on desalination and waste water recycling involving experts and scientists in this field. Expressing the hope that Stella Maris would act as a role model in this regard, she said that the college had implemented the
rain harvesting structure in the year 1994 thus acting as a forerunner.
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Stella Maris water recycling plant
