National seminar on groundwater

Bhopal, Apr 2 (UNI) A two-day national seminar on groundwater gets underway here on April 4.

Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jakhar would be the Chief Guest at 'Groundwater -- 2007' being organised by the All-India Central Groundwater Board Officers' Association, recognised by the Water Resources Ministry. The event would be presided over by state Planning Board Vice-Chairman Sompal Shastri at Hotel Mark, a release said.

As per the Earth Policy Institute, aquifers are being overexploited in India's highly-productive agricultural states.

Doubling of population and trebling of water consumption in the second half of the 20th century -- irrigation accounting for 70 per cent, industry 20 per cent and the remainder for domestic use -- placed an enormous load on all water bodies, surface as well as subsurface.

The Technical Committee received more than 135 abstracts of scientific papers, covering the seminar's various sub-themes, from more than 100 institutions or organisations covering most part of India by more than 250 authors and co-authors. As many as 107 full papers on different groundwater-linked issues were received. Four Hindi papers are being published.

Keeping in view the large number of papers, it was decided to publish them in two volumes apart from the Abstract volume. The first contained Theme I (Groundwater Exploration, Development and Management for Agriculture and Rural Potable Water), Theme II (Groundwater Management through Artificial Recharge, Rainwater Harvesting and Conjunctive Use of Water), Theme III (Integrated Water Resources Management, Technological Development to Map Subsurface Horizons, Water Well design, Suitability of Water Pumps and Groundwater Modeling), Theme IV (Groundwater Resource of Madhya Pradesh -- Jalabhishek Abhiyan and Role of Non-Government Organisations, Financial Institutions, the Corporate Sector and Media in the Field of Groundwater Development) and Theme V (Groundwater Quality, Pollution, Environment, Sanitation and its Legal Aspects), the release added.

UNI