Thus, the urban citizen has to deal with water scarcity on one hand and flooded streets on the other. Urban water management is in a total mess in India. But what is heartening is that in many places civil society is playing an important role, approaching courts where necessary . Water harvesting is increasingly being practised in urban areas to deal with this twin menace of scarcity and floods. In Chennai, rainwater harvesting is also being used to prevent salinity ingress into coastal freshwater aquifers.
Rooftops are popular catchment areas that are used to harvest the rain.
The rainwater harvested is reasonably clean and can be used either directly or for recharging groundwater aquifers. But urban runoff can be highly polluting because of industries and vehicular traffic. Urban waterbodies are today no more than dumping grounds in India. They are not only heavily polluted but also uncared for. They steadily decline in size and soon get taken over by land sharks.