Save 8 Mile Khola

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In truth, our planet should be called Water, not Earth. About 70 percent of the globe is blanketed by this life-giving liquid roughly 331 million cubic miles of it. But most of that is not available to us. All but 3 percent of Earth’s water is salty; and, of the remaining dab of fresh water, three-quarters is locked in ice. It gets worse. About half of what’s left, Earth’s unfrozen fresh water is 2,500 feet or more below ground, embedded in rock. That’s too deep to recover economically. Are you following these shrinking numbers? The accessible fresh water in lakes, rivers, groundwater, and the atmosphere makes up only half of one-quarter of 3 percent - for non-Einsteins that works out to 0.375 percent - of Earth’s total water. It’s precious stuff.

- Toby Hemenway, Gaia’s Garden.

'Save 8 Mile Khola' is a crusade by the villagers living in and around the 8 Mile, one of the major rivers in Darjeeling, to save their precious resource - 8 Mile river.

History of 8 Mile River

Imagine a rich bio-diverse rainforest bursting with animal and plant life. Bears, leopards, tigers, foxes and bisons hunting for wild boars, deer and rabbits whilst the latter go about scurrying for cover between large oak, alder, magnolia, chestnuts and birch trees. This occasional commotion leading to a flutter of birds of every hue and color on a blue sky that wasn't tainted yet with the pollution of the modern day contraptions that we call vehicles. Early historians have written that there were probably few places in the world in which so many different types of flora and fauna existed within a small area.

The perennial 8 Mile river unlike a glacier fed river is a forest fed river hence it's richer in minerals and nutrients. No wonder that some of the older folks remember the Britishers ferrying the nutrient rich natural 'mineral water' from 8 Mile river to Darjeeling and Kurseong during the early days of colonising the hills.

Present Day Situation

Today, the forests are no longer as dense or bio-diverse and the wildlife population has dropped considerably. However, 8 Mile river is probably one of the few major hill rivers that still has water gushing down even during the dry summer months. This in partly is because the river is still fed by a forest reserve and wildlife sanctuary (Senchel). The health of the river today is precarious because of primarily the following reasons:

A dysfunctional waste management system and a terrible habit of - just dump it into the khola (river) and it will be washed away during the rains - which seems to be deeply ingrained in the local culture. It is easy to point fingers at the respective municipalities but it is a complex problem that requires not just a top-down approach but also movement that would be nothing short of a revolution at the grassroots level.
The ‘Business’ of Water: Yes, unfortunately one of the most thriving economy in the hills seem to be of pumping water from anywhere upstream and supplying it to the town folks at a hefty price in water tankers or even leaky municipality pipes.
River Pollution: The menace of plastic in our new-age consumerist society cannot be stated enough. It is clogging our rivers no doubt, but untreated household waste water (including sewage) when directed to the rivers also has a toxic effect on the water quality.

What has been done so far?

When we realised the magnanimity of the problem, we decided very early that we had to evolve a strategy to tackle this problem in a slow but determined and foolproof manner. We ran a door-to-door campaign to educate the village folks, specially the roadside shop owners, to segregate their waste and for this separate bins were provided to collect the huge amount of organic waste that gets generated from their shops daily. Since then the workers and the volunteering community at TIEEDI have been collecting this so called waste (which in permaculture parlance is called 'black gold') daily and composting it to generate good soil.

Meanwhile, we completely cleaned up one of the tributaries of 8 Mile Khola that passes through the TIEEDI farm was cleaned up, to set an example before we talked about cleaning the bigger river. Just from this small river (jhora in Nepali) we managed to dig out 300 tons of inorganic waste that was clogging up the river completely!

We have initiated the process of creating a working body association involving members from the village community and in our first phase of discussions every household has agreed to help in cleaning the river by sending atleast one member of the family. Also the local association body will be meeting regularly to ensure that the following objectives are met.

What needs to be done further?

For the second phase of this project we have outlined the following objectives:

Clean up the river completely by involving the community and other social organisations.
Start the work on three model septic tanks and grey water harvesting systems that will cover about 20 households. This will partly stop the ground water and river water pollution due to household and sewage waste. We have already surveyed the houses and spoken to the owners and all of them have agreed to allow us to tweak their plumbing system to:
- Separate the grey water from the sewage system and direct it into the community grey water harvesting pit. Following the principles of permaculture we would be filtering this water naturally that would eventually recharge the groundwater levels once it's filtered.
- Connect the sewage water into a community septic tank which also would be designed to harvest humanure (human manure) or connect it to a bio-gas generating system.
Form a local members association and involve the community, especially the youth to run an awareness campaign and work out a functional system for segregation, recycling and up-cycling of waste.
Start a community composting unit and use this soil generated to plant trees and flowers to beautify the surrounding areas of the village.

Once we achieve this objective we will look at next set of objectives which can be classified as follows:

Survey and cover all the households to have septic tanks and grey water harvesting systems so that there is no household waste water polluting the river.
Setup a small scale waste management industry that segregates, composts, recycles and disposes waste responsibly.
Link the other benefits of having a environmentally conscious community by opening up the possibilities of promoting eco-tourism and community homestay networks.

How are we executing this project?

We have a core management team with a combined experience of over two decades in the higher management within the corporate world, and the team will execute this project following the six sigma DMAIC principles of Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve & Control. We are combining this corporate efficiency principles with the Permaculture principles to ensure that the project achieves its objectives. In addition, following are some of the other basic principles we have outlined to ensure the success of this project:

Analyse all costs in the project in depth. Add a buffer of 20%.
Appoint a skilled and experienced Project Coordinator with good interpersonal skills. Cover his/her basic cost for two months with a minimum salary.
Get a highly skilled excellent team of workers to execute the construction part of the project.
Involve the community in every aspect of the project. Encourage volunteering but hire two locals for paid position so that the work doesn't get affected at any given point of time.
Educate! Educate! Educate! All the stakeholders need to understand why this project is critical and how the success of this project is going to be a win-win situation for everyone. Conduct awareness camps for children - they will be ones to ensure that the changes are long terms and sustainable.
Create an environment where the local community feels empowered enough to take the initiative and participate responsibly. And thereby ensuring that none of this comes across as a handout.

Taking forward the last point, the ultimate objective of this project is to ensure that after this kick-starter it is self sustainable. We are looking to generate revenues from this process that to be not just sustainable but also regenerative in the coming days.

How can you help?

Given the scale of this project we need all the help that we can get. There are a number of ways that you can participate in this crusade:

River cleanup drive: Starting 30th of April every Sunday has been earmarked as a river cleanup day and you can join us as a volunteer to help us remove the existing waste from the river. The details of the river clean-up drive will be posted on the facebook page. Pls follow the page (https://www.facebook.com/save8milekhola/) to stay updated on the event details

Financial Assistance: Our cost evaluation for the execution of the second phase of the project is Rs. 350,000. You can help us in our cause by donating funds in our crowdfunding campaign.

Donate in Kind: There are a number of materials that we would require and you can help us by donating some of these items. Please click here for the current updated list of items and raw materials that we require.

Volunteer with us: Apart from the hands required in the actual physical work of cleaning the river, we need help in a lot of other activities. We look forward to skilled professionals who can join our team and brainstorm with us to execute the projects. Interested volunteers can fill up our volunteer application form and we will get back with the details on how they can contribute to our cause. You need not be physically present here to contribute. You can even help us online.

Overall Project Cost Estimate

Coverage of the first meeting with the local stakeholders in the media

Septic Tanks and GreyWater Harvesting Pit Estimates

Ask for an update

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27th December 2018

Dear Donors,

Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

It has been an uphill task for us to revive the river but we have not given up on the crusade yet.

Last year, the shutdown of 4 months due to the Gorkhaland agitation hit us hard and we had to pause the campaign for a bit. It took us a while to sustain our own project (TIEEDI) once things crawled back to normal (politically and economically). However, now we are relatively stable with our permaculture project of responsible and sustainable tourism and its unique offering to the tourists (Tripadvisor, today rates us as the No. 1 Speciality Lodging in the whole of Darjeeling).

Sharing some latest updates that are related to our crusade to save the river:

We have been working with the volunteers in the Save8MileKhola campaign to keep the awareness alive and also to conduct small but impactful campaigns like the 'Plastic Bricks Campaign'. A good number of folks in the village have signed up to contain all their plastic waste in plastic bottles which we are collecting to use while constructing our next mud hut at Tieedi. You will find some pictures and writeups about this campaign in our Save8MileKhola Facebook page. This helps reduce the flow of waste to the river to a large extent.
The other important landmark in Save8MileKhola has been the involvement of the local schools and colleges. We conducted a 7 day residential socio-economic workshop for the NSS students of Salesian College, Sonada. We were successful in merging the social outreach programme of the college with saving of the river. Pls find below the the detailed account of the workshop along with the pictures:
Salesian College Socio-Ecological Outreach Programme:
The upstream village of Rajahatta too has started a cleanup campaign and now there are trash cans placed along both the walking trails that lead up to the village (by the banks of two tributaries of 8 Mile river). Attached is a newspaper article that covered their initiative where the whole village once gathered to clean up the trails.

At this milestone we would like to thank you all once again, as without your timely help we probably would not have been able to sustain the campaign.

What next?

We realised that to be able to sustain the everyday activity of compost collection, plastic bricks collection and building of larger facility to take in the other kinds of waste, we need help from the government too. We have reached out to them and have received positive response from them so far. We will soon be presenting a project plan to them of a comprehensive step by step way to convert 8 Mile into a waste free green village. Will share the project plan with you all too once it is ready to be presented to the government.

That's all for our end as of now. We will keep sharing the updates of the progress as we climb further.

We promise you that difficult as it may be at times to sustain the campaign we will not give up on the river! We hope to someday invite you for a swim or even to drink the fresh elixir of water straight from the river.

If you need more details or would like to be involved further to share the campaign details with your friends and family, pls feel free to reach out to us @ 8250612067. You can also share the crowdfunding link on your social media or through email.

Thanks and Regards,

Utsow

We have been working with the volunteers in the Save8MileKhola campaign to keep the awareness alive and also to conduct small but impactful campaigns like the 'Plastic Bricks Campaign'. A good number of folks in the village have signed up to contain all their plastic waste in plastic bottles which we are collecting to use while constructing our next mud hut at Tieedi. You will find some pictures and writeups about this campaign in our Save8MileKhola Facebook page. This helps reduce the flow of waste to the river to a large extent.
The other important landmark in Save8MileKhola has been the involvement of the local schools and colleges. We conducted a 7 day residential socio-economic workshop for the NSS students of Salesian College, Sonada. We were successful in merging the social outreach programme of the college with saving of the river. Pls find below the the detailed account of the workshop along with the pictures:
Salesian College Socio-Ecological Outreach Programme:
The upstream village of Rajahatta too has started a cleanup campaign and now there are trash cans placed along both the walking trails that lead up to the village (by the banks of two tributaries of 8 Mile river). Attached is a newspaper article that covered their initiative where the whole village once gathered to clean up the trails.

6th May 2018

Dear All,

Thank you all for your support to our campaign so far.

The current update is as follows:

1) Organic Waste Composting: Despite the challenges, we have managed to keep up our promise to 8 Mile hotels that we will collect their everyday organic waste and compost it at Tieedi. We have been doing this since the last 1.5 years and currently the compost being generated has been tested by the Darjeeling Tea Research Center and rated highly.

2) Inorganic Waste Segregation: The residents and hotels have been working with us to segrgate the inorganic waste and instead of dumping it into the 8 Mile river it is currently being stocked up beside the road and taken to a landfill once in every month.

3) Humanure Tanks: We have currently built two operational humanure tanks for the community that is connecting 3 households as of now (with an ability of connecting 4 more on the same tanks). It is a zero waste tanks where the water is drained into the charcoal filter soak pit and the sludge is being mixed with another waste product (wood chips from a carpenter store in Sonada) to generate compost after 2 years.

4) Massive River Clean-ups: Despite the fact that we have taken off more than 10 trucks of waste from the river, there is still a lot that needs to be done to clear off almost two decades of waste that is throttling the river right now. The next massive river clean-up being targetted is on 26th May 2018 as a partnership initiative with ZeroWasteHimalaya and DarjeelingPrerna NGOs of Darjeeling.

5) Socio-Ecological Workshops: We have hosted a number of socio-ecological workshops for school and college students to drive home the awareness of the precarious state of the hills of Darjeeling. More pictures of these events can be viewed by clicking on the respective albums in our facebook page link:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/TIEEDI/photos/?tab=albums

21st August 2017

Dear Donors,

Thank for supporting our cause to save our beloved '8 Mile Khola'.

There have been challenges but we have generated tremendous ground level support from the local residents of 8 Mile, Gorabari, Darjeeling to work towards this cause.

The past two months has been a difficult time in Darjeeling due to the political unrest and people's movement demanding a separate state for Darjeeling within the union of India. Today is the 71st day of strike in the entire district of Darjeeling and life has come to a grinding halt. This has affected the construction work related to our cause and we hope to begin it as soon as the political situation is normalised in the hills.

As we pause the work on the project for a while we would like to share the updates on the work accomplished so far in the project. Attached is also an excel sheet with a detailed update on the expenses incurred so far into the project.

1. 2 Truckloads of waste has been unclogged from the river by our volunteers who have answered our clarion call for the river cleanup on 8 Sundays spread over April to June 2017. 1123 plastic and glass bottles has been harvested from this so called 'waste' and taken to Siliguri to be sold and to the 'raddiwalla' (can't find a better English word for this incredible group of workers/entrepreneurs without whom the problem of waste in India would be even crazier!).

2. Over 3 Tons of organic waste has been collected from the highway shops abutting 8 Mile to be converted into black gold (compost).

3. Three Humanure Septic Tanks have been dug and once the work is completed it would be able to connect and harness the underlying potential of this resource into hu'manure' or bio gas. One of the humanure tanks was in the final stage of completion before work had to be stopped due to the strike in Darjeeling. The tanks have been constructed after having brainstormed the design with the Permaculuturist volunteers at TIEEDI from various corners of the world.

4. Volunteers from 15 countries have stayed at TIEED and joined hands with us in this project to execute the day-to-day tasks of collecting the organic bins from the shops, lending a hand in the river cleanups, construction of the humanure tanks etcs.

5. We have reached out to the nearest higher education institution 'Salesian College' in Gorabari, Darjeeling and their management has agreed to join hands with us in this project.

6. We have also reached out to the West Bengal Forest Department and they have also agreed to sympathetically examine our request to allow us to setup organic compost piles and waste collection bins on the forest land adjoining the road of the highway. Also, the 8 Mile river falls under the jurisdiction of the Senchel Wildlife reserve forest and they have agreed to setup up a high level meeting with the Forest officials once the strike in Darjeeling comes to an end.

7. We have hired Safal, an unemployed but enterprising young man from Bijanbari, Darjeeling, at Rs. 6000/- p.m. salary to help us execute the day to day tasks of this project (primarily waste collection, segregation and composting).

8. As mentioned earlier in the project plan, there was a need of a Project Co-ordinator who would be able to manage this project as professionally as we used to do in the corporated world. We were lucky to be able to convince Vishal Rasailee an ex Product Manager from HP, Bangalore who brings along with him heaps of experience in managing and executing large scale and multiple dependency projects. He has joined hands with us as a Project Coordinator from April 2017.

9. We have managed to raise almost 10% of the project cost (~35000) through Milaap as on 21st Aug. Kindly, do help us by spreading the word amongst your friends and colleague so that we are able to raise the rest of the funds as soon as possible.

We thank you once again from your support. Do feel free to revert to us for any clarification.

Regards,

Utsow Pradhan

Founder - Save8MileKhola

[P.S. : For latest pictures and updates pls follow our Facebook page - www.facebook.com/save8milekhola]