In my childhood days, there were many open wells existing in our village and its surrounding areas. One who dig the well for the public is considered as a very great person. People were taught by elders to dig the wells to mitigate the gravity of their sins.

Also, these open wells were acted as buffers. When it rains continuously for week or more ( now we can’t expect) , the rain water slowly percolated in to the soil and finally reaching to the wells.
Over a period of time when open wells are filled with full of water , the same waters are used to be released in the form of acquifiers. ( locally called JALALU)
I have also seen the Jalalu in Nirmal during 2006and Rebbana in 1999.

Due to decrease in the quantity of rain waters, people started digging bore wells.
The rain water usage by filling in their buckets and vessels had become scarse.

Above two activities had exploited the ground waters.

The worsened situation influenced the people to abandon the open wells. Over a period of time, People started dumping the waste in to open wells. This has further worsened the status of public open wells.
I have received not less than 5 requests to close the public open wells and fill it up with soil. However, I did not agreed for the proposals.

However, In my tenure Nirmal municipality has gone for desiltation of wells and chlorinated even the private wells.
The closure of wells has caused a lot of difficulties in many areas are as following;
1. The ground water table even reached to 300 feets. It is much higher in rain shadow areas.
2. The river Godavari , which flowed in the month o f may , where we used to swim is dried up in the month of November in 2015.
3. We can find the floods and find inundation of areas in urban agglomerations.

Hence, open wells are necessary for the water conservation. We have to act in that direction.