In 4 decades, Faridabad saw fivefold decline in water table

Faridabad, March 22

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The water table in the city has witnessed a fivefold decline in the last 40 years due to increased extraction and poor recharge conditions, reports said.

According to sources in the district administration and experts, the minimum and maximum levels of the water table in some of the pockets, which had been at an average of 10 to 12 m in 1982, had gone down to 70 to 80 m in 2022-23. The extraction of underground water has been found to be double of the annual recharge of water.

Patches adjoining the National Highway-19 passing through the city has been very poor in view of the declining water table due to massive or indiscriminate extraction of the groundwater for commercial and industrial purposes, sources said. However the decline has been between 30 m and 35 m in some other pockets due to various factors, which include less extraction over the period.

“The blocks of Faridabad, Ballabhgarh and Tigaon are in the ‘over-exploited’ category due to the excessive extraction of groundwater,” says Professor Arunagshu Mukherji, head of Centre for Advanced Water Technology and Management in the Manav Rachna Educational Institutions. He said the groundwater extraction was primarily done to fulfill human needs, including drinking water, and agriculture and industrial use.

He said the situation was likely to worsen if proper measures were not taken. Shiv Singh Rawat, a former senior official of the Irrigation Department said the conservation of water through reservoirs was necessary in view of the crisis caused by inadequate supply and high pollution level of water in the NCR.

A report compiled in 2021-22, after an audit of the surface water under the Atal Bhujal Yojna (ABY) revealed that with a large number of tubewells operational in the civic limits, the extraction of water has been around 200 per cent in the city, leading to a sharp decline in the water table. Against a total recharge of 11,034.07 hm of water, the extraction had been around 22,151.60 hm, which is more than double, said Sunil Harsana, a social activist.

As many as 32 units, including companies and residential societies, had been issued notices and were imposed a penalty of around Rs 10 lakh for the unauthorised extraction of groundwater by the Municipal Corporation, Faridabad, last year.