Legal framework needed for better water sources: Official

Tirupathi Mar 10 (UNI) Central Ground Water Board (Southern region) Regionl Director G .D Ojha today stressed the need for effective law for better management of ground water.

Inaugurating a two day National seminar on ''Advances in Hydro Sciences'' organized by Geology department of Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) here, he said there was a need to enact laws to stop sinking borewells in the country.

With the advent of technologies for drilling deep borewells and tube wells, farmers started sinking wells for intensive agricultural activities leading to indiscriminate withdrawal of ground water farming as well as to meet the drinking water for requirements of growing population, both in rural and urban areas, he said.

In the absence of effective regulation for use of the common property resource, ground water levels have drastically fallen in many areas as the withdrawals were more than the annual replenishable resource, he said adding the annual replenishable ground water resource of the entire country was 433 billion cubic metre (bcm), including 34 bcm for natural discharge. The net annual ground water availability was 399 bcm.

The annual ground water draft was 231 bcm out of which 213 bcm was for irrigation and 18 bcm for domestic and industrial use, he pointed out.

The status of ground water development was comparatively high in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Union Territory of Daman and Diu, where the ground water development was more than 100 per cent, he added.

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