Rainwater harvesting for application in rural Bangladesh

Rainwater harvesting and storage do not constitute a new technology. It has been used for domestic, agricultural, runoff control, air-conditioning etc. for a long time in different parts of the world. However, rainwater harvesting is not a common practice in Bangladesh. Only 35.5 percent households have been found to use the rainwater as drinking water source during the raining seasons in coastal areas having high salinity problems (Hussain & Ziauddin, 1989). In the backdrop of arsenic contamination in groundwater of Bangladesh, rainwater has been considered as a potential source of arsenic free water.