Well Hunting around Cubbon Park

On this lovely Tuesday morning, GCIL 2020 interns went well hunting - that is, we went looking for the 70 recharge wells around Cubbon park, which are used to replenish aquifers by letting the water which gets trapped in the top foot and a half of soil flow downwards through concrete rings and coarse aggregate. We decided to go today without a guide, and to let ourselves explore the park and find the wells on our own. We had another Biome intern, Dennis, who is studying for his masters in economics and came from Germany to work with Biome, with us for the morning. He met us at our campus, and we all ubered to Cubbon Park, then walked to find paint with which to mark the wells. We decided on a nice, colorful blue, which would stand out and last on the concrete.

When we started going about the park, we quickly realized how big Cubbon Park is. We decided to start with the perimeter of the area we were in, and work our way into the park. To mark the wells, we used Google My Maps, which allows you to build your own map. We titled each well on My Maps R#, to indicate that they were recharge wells. Therefore, we can also come back and mark out the open wells if needed. We were able to mark out 20 of the 70 wells.

We had a couple of reflections as we were moving throughout the park. One, was that a guide who was a bit more familiar with the look of the wells and the general area in which there were more or less of them would be extremely useful. Second, we learned how to maximize the tasks at hand as a team. While we began by all walking together, by the end we were spread out walking in a line, calling to each other when we found a well. It was very difficult to know whether or not we missed a well, as some areas on our map definitely looked much emptier than others. We hypothesized that this could be due to the variable soil and depth of the aquifers below. The shallower the aquifers, and the greater their presence, the more wells should be in that area. We also learned that using Google Maps, and simply copy and pasting the coordinates onto Google My Maps, was easier and more accurate then just relying on the Google My Maps, which did not track our location very well.

We had a meeting in the afternoon with Biome to discuss projects which we would be working on during the rest of our time here. We decided that finishing the Cubbon Park project would be top priority, followed by the repair reports on the government schools around Bangalore, and creating new proposals for new schools to implement rainwater harvesting systems.

As usual, another productive, education, and fun day with Biome! So excited to continue this work and continue to build our skills and the projects.

-Team Biome