Water bioengineering techniques for efficient water harvesting system

Construction of check dam is the first step towards field water harvesting. Check dams stop water flow and raise it up to their height. Average annual rainfall is higher than what is needed for the country, still we face water crisis in major parts of India. Therefore, the need to develop economically viable techniques to manage the available water. Present practice in our country is to construct a check dam in brick masonry, rubble masonry or reinforced cement concrete. These are rigid in nature and may be subjected to uneven settlement, cracking etc resulting in failures. This paper proposes an alternative to such type of structures. An “Eco-friendly flexible check dam – A case study” with Bioengineering techniques has been described. The results are compared with conventional check dams and they indicate that saving on construction cost is approximately 55% with the new alternative suggested, with more water storage.