HOW DEEP IS YOUR GROUNDWATER?
TIME TO RAISE IT UP!
Groundwater—the world’s largest freshwater store, it is a life-sustaining resource that supplies water to billions of people, plays a central part in irrigated agriculture and influences the health of many ecosystems. About 30% of the world’s urban population depends on groundwater for their daily water supply. This dependence underscores the vital role that durable and reliable water wells and borewells play in ensuring water security. With climate change making rainfall patterns increasingly unpredictable, groundwater will assume even more importance.
In India, groundwater is the most critical water resource and is the lifeline of India’s food and drinking water security. It is the largest user of groundwater globally, extracting more than the United States and China put together, with an average extraction rate of 700 billion liters of water per day. If current trends persist, at least 25 percent of India’s agriculture will be at risk.
To cope with the future of groundwater availability, it is necessary to radically reform all forms of resource consumption. As per the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) report, Bengaluru city has been categorised as RED ZONE due to over extraction of groundwater.
The pumping rates in megacities of India need to be reduced and compensated by urban rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge with wastewater and similar measures. This would reduce dependency on freshwater and put treated water to higher usage.
Groundwater recharge
Groundwater is already protected underground. We must only manage its extraction, protect its recharge areas and capabilities, and prevent contamination sources. Monsoon in India lives for a short period of about three months in a year. This period may not produce sufficient water to infiltrate into the ground and replenish the high depleted GW naturally.
Artificial recharge is a method of augmenting the natural movement of surface water into groundwater reservoir with some civil construction techniques. This can be done through a precise mapping of aquifers and a concerted effort to direct rainwater into these aquifers, instead of letting it drain into the sea.
Groundwater recharge projects will need to be rolled out at a greater scale in order to balance out current water abstraction trends. At McD BERL we provide a wide range of groundwater recharge solutions by analysing underlying aquifers and choose an appropriate groundwater management that is ecologically sustainable.
