Rainwater goes down the drain

The city where groundwater level is depleting at an alarming rate fails to make use of about 7,000 cusecs of rain water that goes down the Nazafgarh drain every rainy season. Dhananjay Jha reports.

The city where groundwater level is depleting at an alarming rate fails to make use of about 7,000 cusecs of rain water that goes down the Nazafgarh drain every rainy season.

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The startling revelation has been made by a research team of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, working on rain water harvesting (RWH) projects in Gurgaon.

According to the researchers, this is a serious concern and cannot be ignored. “This water can be saved and used to recharge the water table. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) does not have any master plan for recharging of water table and the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) is too slow to enforce the master plan related to RWH it made three years ago,”said Kulsum Fatima, associate professor at Jamia Millia Islamia.

In Gurgaon, groundwater depletes at an alarming rate of seven feet per year. Rain water harvesting is mandatory for any new building plan approval in MCG and Huda areas but the two bodies have failed to enforce the law and challan the defaulters. They are working over 500 RWH sites for over two years and managed to complete only 150 sites.

The Jamia research team is likely to submit the report to Gurgaon deputy commissioner PC Meena in a day or two. “We alarmed the administration earlier when the water table in central Gurgaon areas like Sikandarpur and Nathupur was 175 feet deep. The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) has notified the city but still groundwater extraction is underway. We will meet the authority shortly,” said Gauhar Mehmud, another researcher.

According to experts, Gurgaon on average receives rainfall of 595 mm that is good enough to recharge its water table.

“Natural drains like Nathupur, Ghata, Sohna, etc have been encroached upon and water bodies like Ghata lake, Nazafgarh lake and Sukhrali pond too have dried up. The fast depletion of water table is a big threat to the green cover,”said Ruby, a research scholar.

Meena had last year made 20 teams to crack whip on misuse of RWH structures by individuals and developers after getting rap from the Punjab and Haryana High Court on the depleting water table.

“In some areas of central Gurgaon, the water table depleted as deep as four metre between June and October 2012,”said a senior official in the hydrology department.