The Chairman of Capital Development Authority (CDA) has directed water and sanitation department to ensure better water supply and ordered authorities to serve notices on those who waste it. The CDA has amended building by-laws aimed at facilitating the construction of roof top rain harvesting systems in houses build on plots having areas of more than 400 square yards.
"Amendment has been made in the CDA building by-laws for constructing rooftop water collection/rain water harvesting systems in houses built on plots having area of 400 square yards or more," CDA spokesman Ramzan Sajjad told APP here on Saturday. He said standardising the roads drainage network for future sectors was being carried out to have rain water harvesting for making the new sectors environment friendly.
He said CDA was the first ever municipality which has successfully launched Rain Water Harvesting Programme to re-charge the underground water table. Initially, the pilot Rain Water Harvesting Project has been launched in the Faisal mosque. However, he said the CDA has made comprehensive arrangements to expand this network across the capital to benefit from this primary source of water - the rain.
The spokesman was of the view that Islamabad has a huge potential to benefit from this concept to overcome the water shortage in the city. Ramzan Sajjad said cleaning of ravines, being the integral part of rain water harvesting mechanism, is also being carried out in collaboration with the partner organisations.
He said that under this programme Barri Imam stream is being cleaned with bio-redemption techniques with the technical assistance of Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC). He said that this model would be replicated in the other streams to revive their natural flow. He said that a task force for cleaning of the streams and ravines consisting of CDA officers and Civil Society has been constituted to actively pursue this programme.