New Delhi: Groundwater levels in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, and 20 other cities dipped by more than 20 metres from 2017 to 2020, according to a report tabled by a Parliamentary Standing Committee Monday.
While Haryana’s Faridabad has become 100 per cent dependent on groundwater use, cities including Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh are “on the verge of becoming totally dependent on it”, the report says. Delhi, Jaipur and Hyderabad are among the major cities severely affected by the issue of water contamination.
The report quotes the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) as saying that increasing population, urbanisation and concretisation are some of the reasons behind the groundwater depletion in these cities.
According to the report tabled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Water Resources Monday, of the total annual extractable groundwater resource of 398 billion cubic metres (BCM) in the country till 2020, 245 BCM was being extracted. It indicated there was a decrease in the overall level of groundwater extraction from 63.3 per cent in 2017 to 61.6 per cent in 2020.
The standing committee had taken up the subject ‘Groundwater: A Valuable but Diminishing Resource’ for examination during its tenure in 2019-20. As the committee couldn’t finalise a report, the subject was again taken up in its successive tenures — 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 for detailed examination. It was finally tabled in the Lok Sabha Monday.
In 2020, the Dynamic Ground Water Resources of the entire country were assessed jointly by CGWB and state groundwater departments under the supervision of the state level committees.
The report noted that in the past few years, the use of groundwater had increased in Punjab’s Ludhiana and Amritsar, as well as Faridabad, with these cities meeting 100 per cent of their water supply from groundwater sources. Cities like Ghaziabad and Dehradun in Uttarakhand— currently drawing 71 per cent and 80 per cent of the groundwater respectively — are also “on the verge of becoming totally groundwater-dependent”.
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Grim water situation due to irrigation
About 14 per cent of India’s 7,089 groundwater assessment units across states and Union Territories have been categorised as over-exploited, while another four per cent fall in the critical category, according to the report.
The report mentions that the committee had noticed that in about 11 states including Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, the percentage share of groundwater extraction for irrigation ranged between 80 per cent and 90 per cent, with some states like Punjab extracting 97 per cent of their groundwater for irrigation.
The main reason for such over-exploitation of groundwater in agriculture was due to the cultivation of paddy and sugarcane crops, which are heavily incentivised by way of highly subsidised water, power and fertilisers, the report argued.
It further said that the grim water situation in the Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh means there’s an urgent need to shift to less water-intensive crops. Schemes such as Direct Seeded Rice — where seeds are sown directly in the field, forgoing the traditional transplanting process that consumes a large volume of water — have been introduced to encourage the judicious use of water. However, farmers are yet to be properly discouraged from growing water-intensive crops as they continue to enjoy high MSP, the report adds.
Industry and contamination
The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) grants no objection certificates (NOC) to withdraw groundwater for commercial purposes after ensuring that it’s recharged to the appropriate level, the report says. However, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) found that “out of the 21 packaged drinking water units assessed across six states, only four obtained NOC for abstraction of groundwater resources”.
It was also reported by the committee that cities such as Delhi, Lucknow, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad had reported high amounts of geogenic (naturally-occuring) contamination and anthropogenic (man-made) contamination of groundwater.
“As many as 249 districts in 18 states have been affected with high salinity problem, 370 districts in 23 states have fluoride contamination beyond permissible limit… 152 districts in 21 states have arsenic problem, 341 districts in 27 states have iron in excess quantity, 92 districts in 14 states have lead…,” the report further noted.
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Appropriate penalties, more autonomy to NWM
The committee was of the view that to stop unrestricted use of groundwater for commercial uses, strict enforcement of the regulations, stringent vigil and appropriate penalties were needed.
The parliamentary panel has also recommended manual monitoring of groundwater level four times a year and collecting water quality samples once a year to obtain background information of quality change regionally.
It was noted that the networks were being enhanced by central and state implementing agencies across the country for improving real time monitoring of groundwater through Digital Water Level Recorders (DWLR) under the National Hydrology Project (NHP) to enable the collection of data on six hourly basis, with transmission once a day. However, the installation was expected to be complete by March 2024.
The committee also recommended that the government give the the National Water Mission (NWM) the financial powers and autonomy needed to fulfill their objectives as it is “still not well-equipped with adequate funds and autonomy” and needs expertise in the form of consultants and advisors, who are yet to be appointed.
“Further, adequate studies are required to be undertaken to assess the impact of climate change on the total water availability to enable formulation of appropriate policies to handle their effects,” it added.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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Source: The Print
