Haryana action plan to check fast-depleting water table

C R Rathee

Alarmed by reports of continued and steep decline in the reservoir-level of underground water in Haryana, particularly in the southern part of the state which includes Gurgaon, the state government has constituted a Water Conservation Mission (WCM). This Mission will make it mandatory for 26 state departments/boards/corporations to participate in the execution of the action plan prepared by it to check depletion of water resources following indiscriminate boring of new tubewells, deepening the existing ones, ignoring the ban imposed by the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA).

Chief minister Om Prakash Chautala’s principal secretary, S Y Quraishi, who heads the WCM, told The Financial Express, that to begin with, the WCM would initiate water conservation schemes out of the normal budgetary allocation for water conservation-related schemes of departments/boards/ corporations. Simultaneously, international agencies and well-known non-governmental organisations will be contacted for financial and technical assistance.
Dr Quraishi said unlike rain water harvesting schemes being followed by various departments, particularly the town & country planning and urban development departments, this action plan would make it mandatory for each homestead of 100 sq yards or above to have provision of a borewell in the premises to facilitate run-off rainwater replenishment and raise the underground reservoir level.

He said the state’s rural development department had identified nearly 7,000 kutcha water ponds in villages. A scheme had been prepared to keep these ponds full, either by special canal water shoots or deep tubewells, exclusively developed for the purpose. These ponds would serve two purposes—facilitate villagers to utilise the pond water to bathe their milch animals, and ensure constant seepage of water into the soil.

The Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB), Haryana State Minor Irrigation & Tubewells Corporation (HSMITC), Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam (HVPN), Haryana Housing Board, HUDA, Command Area Development Agency, Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation, Mewat Development Board, Shivalik Development Board and various other government departments were associated with the Haryana WCM—the first state-level mission of its kind in Asia, he said.

Meanwhile, a premier sanitarywares manufacturing multinational company located in the state has offered to supply, at concessional rates, six-litre capacity flush-latrine cisterns to those who wished to replace outdated 20-litre water capacity cisterns in their houses, offices and commercial establishments.

HUDA has, according to its chief administrator, N C Wadhwa, assured the WCM that it would soon change building bye-laws asking people constructing buildings in HUDA sectors and licensed colonies like DLF City, South City, Palam Vihar, Sushant Lok, Malibu Towne, JMD Towers in the Regency Square and other licensed colonies and group housing societies to make provision only for low-water capacity cisterns, as well as borewells.

He said the main reason for the recent upward revision of drinking water cess in the towns was to restrain people from wasting water.