Groundwater Archives - The TrickyScribe™

The TrickyScribe with inputs from Ashwani Khurana: With the skyrocketing urbanization in the country, there has been an apparent increase in the need for and the use of water. Around 80 percent of the water supplied for domestic use, comes out as wastewater.

Work in progress for the propsed STP at Karma Lakelands, Gurugram, Haryana. Picture Credit: Ananya Singh

Work in progress for the proposed STP at Karma Lakelands, Gurugram, Haryana. Picture Credit: Ashwani Khurana

Wastewater, in most of the cases, is let out untreated and it either sinks into the ground as a potential pollutant of the water table or is discharged into the natural drainage system causing pollution in downstream areas.

There stands an urgent need for treating wastewater using modern technology and recover as much usable water as possible. It may be mentioned here that a majority of Indian towns and cities have either no or highly inadequate sewage treatment facilities.

Karma Lakelands

It was back in the 1980s that Ashwani Khurana pledged to plant trees at his office and his residence in posh South Delhi locality Vasant Kunj. He has planted more than two lakh saplings many of whom have already grown into large-scale trees. Khurana believes that afforestation, like charity, should begin at home but shouldn’t end there. Khurana acquired the plot in 1989 turned that into Karma Lakelands. It is a nearly 300 acres of land with more than 200,000 existing trees and plants.

Road up to Karma Lakelands

Right from being the highest Indian income tax assessee in 1989 to becoming a visionary and guiding light for Karma Lakelands, Khurana has always believed in ‘Responsible Living’. He not only encourages ecological and sustainable practices like water harvesting, organic agro, sewage treatment among others but also practices them at his resort, home and community.

Sewage Treatment Plant

The project in Naurangpur locality of Gurugram, Haryana, has a dedicated sewage treatment plant (STP) with a capacity to treat half a million liters of sewage daily. Of course, no golf course and its patrons can generate sewage in volumes as aforementioned, adjoining societies were persuaded to get their wastewater recycled free of cost. The project is already in its last leg and is likely to be commissioned in the near future. Recycled water can be used for irrigation purposes.

The STP being installed uses moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) technology known to increase reliability, streamlining operations in less space.

Being compact and efficient apart, the MBBR STPs that employ millions of polyethylene biofilm carriers operating in diverse motion within an aerated wastewater treatment basin also do not release any toxic gas. Another feature, although optional is that of a reed bed that further enhances the purity of treated water.

Benefits of Recycled Water

At a time when golf courses around the world have been infamous for being guzzlers of groundwater and chemicals, the aim of Karma is to eventually put a stop to both. Minimising the use of groundwater to zero, with the use re-cycled water will give rest to the water table which will then be allowed to rise, rather than be depleted any further.

Irrigational use of recycled water is always suggested for it is already nutrient-loaded. The MBBR produces minimal sludge, making treated water nutrient loaded. Whatever negligible sludge is left over is to be utilized as bio-compost in the landscape and golf course.

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The year 2014 marked the end of water woes for 56-year-old Rampravesh Singh, a fruit and vegetable farmer from Thumbo ka Golia, a village in Jalore district, Rajasthan. His income grew 40% in 2015 over his 2013 income, as he switched to growing vegetables and fruits from castor oil, helped by the bountiful monsoon which raised the water level in his well by 9.14 feet, almost double the rise in 2014 that was somewhere close to 4.57 feet.

In contrast, the average farmer in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana faces the prospect of having no groundwater left for irrigation by 2025. Groundwater extraction, in these states, generally exceeds the rate at which it is being replenished through rainfall, backflows from irrigation and seepage from canals, other waterbodies and conservation structures.

Increasing use of riverbanks damaging Gharial habitat

Singh’s well bucked a nationwide trend–across India barely 3% wells registered a rise in water level exceeding 4 metres in the year ending January 2016, according to a 2016-Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) report.

Merely around 35% of wells showed any rise in water level, which declined in 64% of wells. Average water levels in January 2016 were lower than the average water level between 2006 and 2015.

Behind the trend of falling water levels is India’s annual extraction rate of groundwater which is over 251 cubic kilometer (cu km)–equivalent to 26 times the water stored in the Bhakra Dam–making India world’s biggest consumer of groundwater, according to a 2012 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization report. With annual extraction rates of 112 cu km, the US and China tie at a distant second.

Over 90% of groundwater is extracted for irrigation, as per the Ground Water Year Book for 2014-15 as released by the CGWB, underscoring India’s dependence on groundwater for irrigation–it provides water for 60% of the irrigated area.

Over the past four decades—when India commissioned roughly half of its 50 biggest dams—around 84% of the total addition to the net irrigated area has come from groundwater, as per a government committee report in 2016 .

The problem–and the advantage–with groundwater is its decentralised access. Consequently, India has an estimated 30 million groundwater structures, according to the July 2016 government report.

Depleting groundwater table

The storage facility is available in 91 major reservoirs of the country for the week ending on May 18, 2017 was 35.622BCM, which is just 23% of combined storage capacity of these reservoirs. The same was 24% for the week ending on May 11, 2017.

The total storage capacity of surveyed 91 reservoirs is 157.799 BCM, almost around 62% of the total storage capacity of 253.388 BCM which is estimated to have been created in the country. As many as 37 reservoirs out of these 91 have hydropower benefit with installed capacity of more than 60 MW.

Should communities manage groundwater?

Local stakeholders can prove to be the best in policing the use of water, and they are more likely to do so honestly because their lives depend on its availability.

Community-driven decentralised water management was the norm in India until about 100 years ago, prior to the development of the modern canal-based flood irrigation system and extraction technology.

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