Water dips down under
PIYUSH KUMAR TRIPATHI
Patna, March 21: The groundwater level in the state capital is dipping fast. Every year, it is depleting by 13cm. If the report of Central Ground Water Board, Mid-Eastern Region (CGWB-MER), is anything to go by, it will be down by a kilometre in 800 years.
A report titled “Assessment of groundwater in Patna urban area” published in October 2010 by CGWB-MER, Patna, said it was declining by 13cm per year. The water has gone deeper by 2.5m (7.5ft) over the past two decades, according to the report.
“The water-level in Patna can sustain the current and future water requirements. Water from adjoining areas gets used for extraction. The current decline is because of a large difference of rates at which water is getting extracted and at which shallow water (0.68m below ground-level to 10.78m below ground-level) is being revived by rain water,” a hydro-geologist at CGWB-MER said. Groundwater experts, though, are not ready to buy the “things under control” proclamation.
“Even if there is a decline of 13cm per year over the past two decades, which the board claims to get compensated by the water reserves, what do they have to say about the 60cm fall in the pre-monsoon levels between 2009 and 2010? Shallow water supplements only a fraction of water requirements of Patna,” said Ashok Ghosh, professor-in-charge, department of environment and water management, AN College, Patna.
According to a study, groundwater in Patna continues to be at 220m (660ft) below ground-level, constituting a total reserve of 1,500 million cubic metres. This fulfils requirement of over 90 per cent of the water requirement of the city.
This water is made available to the citizens either by Patna Municipal Corporation through 89 deep tubewells tapping the water in the range of 150-200m (250-600ft) or by household tubewells that extract water from a range of 40 to 100m (120ft to 300ft).
According to the estimate prescribed by Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, 2006, 52 per cent of population in Patna depend on the municipality for its water requirement, while 40 per cent of the households have their own tubewells. The total annual extraction is put at 180 million cubic metres.
“I had installed a jet motor pump through a deep borewell having a depth of 140ft below ground-level in 1986 but the force of water for filling my overhead tank declined after 2000. Earlier, it used to take 15-20 minutes to fill the tank, after 2005 it started taking 45 minutes to an hour. I replaced the pump with a submersible motor pump in 2008 and increased the depth of the well to 250ft below ground-level. Now the tank gets filled in 10-15 minutes,” said Suresh Kumar Sharma, a resident of Sri Krishna Nagar.
“Many older jet motors equipped with 100-150ft deep tubewell have stopped functioning because of lack of sufficient force. I have constructed hundreds of deep tubewells with a depth of over 250ft in the past three to four years, which are equipped with submersible pumps,” Jagannath Prasad, a private tubewell and motor pump installation contractor, said.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Water Management Experts to discuss floods in Bihar
Arun Kumar
Patna: Water management experts as well as water activists from different parts of the country will converge here on Wednesday to discuss cause factors of widespread floods in Gangetic plains of Bihar. A workshop on “river dynamics and flood hazard assessment with special reference to the Kosi river” has been organised jointly by Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and University of Durham (UK) under the aegis of UK-India Educational Research Initiative (UKIERI) British Council, New Delhi.
Noted Water management expert, Rajiv Sinha of IIT Kanpur while talking to this correspondent said that under UKIERI project, Kosi river draining parts of North Bihar and Nepal have been chosen for its study because of Kosi being a river in the north Bihar plains – a major tributary to Ganga river system. This river has been infamous for being a problematic river system due to recurrent and extensive flooding and frequent changes in its course.
In 2008 India witnessed one of the greatest river disasters in the country in the recent history when Kosi river shifted by 120 kilometres’ eastward, triggered by the breach of afflux bund at Kusaha in Nepal. This breach had resulted in disaster by flooding of a very large area in Nepal and North Bihar affecting more than 3 million people said Sinha.
UKIERI research has specially examined the role of sediment flux in flood risk in the Kosi river. Kosi carries a very high sediment load and the construction of embankments and barrages had resulted in significant rise of river bed level over the years. The rivers is presently flowing in super elevated condition at several reaches including Kusaha, said Sinha.
According to Sinha flood management strategies in Kosi river have largely been focussed on embankments and the controls of geomorphology and sediment flux have not been suitably incorporated in such programmes said IIT Professor, Sinha.
The workshop will discuss river dynamics and flood risk factor on the basis of lessons learnt from Kosi disaster of August 2008, understanding river dynamics, drainage congestion, sediment sources and their role in flood risk, lessons from other Gangetic river systems, river training and impact of structural measures and role of local participation in flood management.
Alexander Densmore of Durham (UK), Ajay Dixit of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, Dinesh Mishra of Barh Mukti Abhiyan, L P Singh of Ganga Flood Control Commission will be prominent among those participating in the workshop said Sinha.
Patna: Water management experts as well as water activists from different parts of the country will converge here on Wednesday to discuss cause factors of widespread floods in Gangetic plains of Bihar. A workshop on “river dynamics and flood hazard assessment with special reference to the Kosi river” has been organised jointly by Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and University of Durham (UK) under the aegis of UK-India Educational Research Initiative (UKIERI) British Council, New Delhi.
Noted Water management expert, Rajiv Sinha of IIT Kanpur while talking to this correspondent said that under UKIERI project, Kosi river draining parts of North Bihar and Nepal have been chosen for its study because of Kosi being a river in the north Bihar plains – a major tributary to Ganga river system. This river has been infamous for being a problematic river system due to recurrent and extensive flooding and frequent changes in its course.
In 2008 India witnessed one of the greatest river disasters in the country in the recent history when Kosi river shifted by 120 kilometres’ eastward, triggered by the breach of afflux bund at Kusaha in Nepal. This breach had resulted in disaster by flooding of a very large area in Nepal and North Bihar affecting more than 3 million people said Sinha.
UKIERI research has specially examined the role of sediment flux in flood risk in the Kosi river. Kosi carries a very high sediment load and the construction of embankments and barrages had resulted in significant rise of river bed level over the years. The rivers is presently flowing in super elevated condition at several reaches including Kusaha, said Sinha.
According to Sinha flood management strategies in Kosi river have largely been focussed on embankments and the controls of geomorphology and sediment flux have not been suitably incorporated in such programmes said IIT Professor, Sinha.
The workshop will discuss river dynamics and flood risk factor on the basis of lessons learnt from Kosi disaster of August 2008, understanding river dynamics, drainage congestion, sediment sources and their role in flood risk, lessons from other Gangetic river systems, river training and impact of structural measures and role of local participation in flood management.
Alexander Densmore of Durham (UK), Ajay Dixit of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, Dinesh Mishra of Barh Mukti Abhiyan, L P Singh of Ganga Flood Control Commission will be prominent among those participating in the workshop said Sinha.
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