Groundwater situation critical in 26% of state villages, says survey

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 8

Nihalwas village in Mahendragarh has the worst scenario of groundwater availability, with the water table plummeting to 111.20m below ground level. Another village Palan in the same district has a groundwater table depth of 110m.

In the first-ever village-level survey on water table, the Haryana Water Resources (Conservation, Regulation and Management) Authority (HWRA) has reported that 25.9 per cent of villages in the state fall under the “Severely groundwater stressed” category.

Micro-level planning by categorisation

This village-level categorisation will assist in awareness generation and will be useful in micro-level planning of policies and remedial action regarding groundwater management of the villages. —Keshni Anand Arora, chairman, HWRA

The survey covered 6,885 villages. The data is for June 2020. As many as 1,780 villages fall in this category as the depth of water table has reached 30.01m or more.

In this category, Darbi in Sirsa has seen a slump in the water table by 47.20m. It was 21 m in 2010, but in 2020, it reached 68.20m. Similarly, Bharokhan village in the same district has seen a slump in the water table by 47m, with 21m in 2010 and 68 m in 2020.

On the basis of the decadal fluctuation, 957 villages have a decline rate between 0-1m per year, 707 have a decline rate between 1.01-2m per year, 79 villages show a decline rate of more than 2m per year and 37 have no decline.

In the district-wise analysis, Kurukshetra represents the worst picture, with 97.5 per cent of villages in the “Severely groundwater stressed” category. Out of the 433 villages, 422 are in this zone.

The second-worst in the state is Mahendragarh, where 308 out of 378 (81.5%) are in the “Severely groundwater stressed” category. In Fatehabad, 151 out of 245 villages (61.6%) fall in this categorisation, while the figure for Kaithal is 170 out of 284 villages (59.9%).

There are 1,041 villages (15.1%) in the state in the “Moderately Groundwater Stressed” category as the water table here is between 20.01m to 30m. Also, there are 1,807 villages (26.2%) that have a water table between 10.01m to 20m and fall under the “Potential groundwater stressed” category.

In total, there are 4,628 villages (67.2%) in the state which fall under the area of concern.

Earlier, the Central Ground Water Board used to bring out the block-level data on groundwater stressed areas. But with the formation of the HWRA, the village-level projections have been made by dividing these into seven categories.

There are 1,261 villages in “Good groundwater potential” having water table depth from 5m-10m, 319 in “Potential waterlogged” having a depth of 1.5m-3m, and 85 in “Severely waterlogged” with a depth of less than 1.5m, categories.

“This village-level categorisation will assist in awareness generation and will be useful in the micro-level planning of policies and remedial action with regard to the groundwater management of the villages,” said chairman HWRA Keshni Anand Arora. The authority has called for objections or suggestions from the public on the proposed categorisation.

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