E-Paper
Water deficit state: Haryana’s water demand supply chasm widening
The IWRP showed that 1,948 villages of Haryana were severely deficit in terms of groundwater availability with the depth to water table being more than 30 metres. Similarly, 1,093 villages were moderately stressed in terms of groundwater availability with the depth to water table being more than 20 metres but less than 31 metres.
Haryana is experiencing a water deficit of about 14 billion cubic metre annually with the total water demand across all sectors going up to about 34.96 billion cubic metre per year (about 34 lakh crore litres). The state has a total water availability of about 20.93 billion cubic metre which included the surface water, the groundwater and the treated wastewater.
As per a first-of-a-kind integrated water resources plan (IWRP) to conserve water presented by the Haryana Water Resources Authority (HWRA) at the recently held ‘Water Conclave’ at Panchkula, the actual delivery of river water to Haryana in 2020-21 was 10.78 billion cubic metre as against allocated river water share of about 15.95 billion cubic metre. A 12-year average of actual river water delivery to the state worked out to be about 11.68 billion cubic metre.
Haryana Water Resources Authority chairperson Keshni Anand Arora said that among the detrimental effects of the water deficit were excess withdrawal of groundwater from shallow aquifers, over withdrawal of water from deep aquifer leading to serious consequences, about 10% water shortage to crops resulting in less yield and 10% less water supply to other sectors.
‘More than 1,900 villages severely groundwater stressed’
The IWRP showed that 1,948 villages of the state were severely stressed in terms of groundwater availability with the depth to water table being more than 30 metres. Similarly, 1,093 villages were moderately stressed in terms of groundwater availability with the depth to water table being more than 20 metres but less than 31 metres.
“There are 1,903 villages which have been flagged as potentially stressed in terms of groundwater availability as the depth to water table is between 10.01 metres to 20 metres,’’ said an HWRA official.
The IWRP statistics also showed that there were 88 severely waterlogged villages where the depth of the water table is 1.5 metre or less.
‘Good groundwater table village areas shrinking’
A worrying sign as per the decadal trend with regards to water table depth is that the area in the good groundwater potential villages have drastically reduced over the years. From 41.26 lakh acre in 2000 the area shrunk to 16.33 lakh acres in 2020. It was about 27 lakh acre in 2010.
The village areas with a water table depth of 30 metres or more concurrently increased from 4.95 lakh acre in 2000 to 14.24 lakh acre in 2010 and 26.90 lakh acre in 2020. Also, the village areas with a water table depth of more than 20 metres but less than 31 metres increased from 4.88 lakh acre in 2000 to 15.64 lakh acre in 2010 but came down to 15.11 lakh acre in 2020.
On the other hand, the area in the severely waterlogged villages has doubled since 2000 from 60,000 acres in 2000 to 1.72 lakh acre in 2020, the IWRP data showed.
Officials said that a major demand sector for water is the agriculture sector which consumes about 86% of the available water. Reflecting on the groundwater depletion in the state, HWRA member Sanjay Marwah said that farm practices such as sowing of paddy, a water-guzzling crop, the need for increasing the foodgrain productivity, primarily the paddy and wheat were responsible for it.
“We need to adopt technological advances in the agriculture sector and crop diversification,’’ he said.
Proposed interventions to conserve water, improve availability
The HWRA chairperson said that among the proposed interventions to save water were expanding the area under micro-irrigation, giving thrust to direct seeding of rice, reuse of treated wastewater, groundwater recharge and modernisation of channels and water courses.
“We have proposed certain strategies like shifting from groundwater to canal based water supply for groundwater depleting areas, conducting aquifer mapping studies by central groundwater board, monitoring of groundwater through piezometers, effective implementation of natural farming, conservation tillage and introducing a system of audit for monitoring efficiency of canal water,’’ the chairperson said.
