Farmers Movement Archive

18 rainwater harvesting plants set up in Jalandhar district

Tribune News Service Jalandhar, December 6 While a check on the falling water table could not be handled through crop diversification plans of the government due to MSP issues, a slew of projects such as installing rainwater harvesting (RWH) system across the district by the Soils Department are expected to do some course correction in the coming years. While the department has already installed 18 RWH plants annually recharging 16 lakh litres of water, as many as 105 more such plants are in the offing, which are expected to recharge the water table with an additional 56 lakh litres of water each year. Explaining the mechanism, sub-divisional soil conservation officer, Jalandhar, Lupinder Kumar, said: “In the set-up, clean rainwater from rooftops is collected by a gamut of pipes and directed towards underground tanks for groundwater recharge. An area of 16,100 sq m of terraces of various buildings has been covered in the scheme, which is already directing an estimated 16 lakh litres of rainwater into the water table every year.” Among the 18 projects which have already got completed are three RWH plants at the DC office, three in Cantonment, one each in the office of Executive Officer Bhogpur, Zila Parishad, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Nurmahal, and Rurka Kalan. Seven projects under the Centrally-sponsored Integrated Watershed Management Project (IWMP), too, have been completed, besides one community project covering rooftops of some houses in a 1700 sq m area. Among the upcoming 105 projects covering a rooftop area of 56,650 sq m are seven at PAP covering 7,370 sq m and one at Kendriya Vidyalaya, which will collect rainwater from 400 sq metres area. Under the IWMP scheme, 12 buildings are to be covered from where rainwater falling on 4,910 sq m would be collected. Under the Smart City project, 86 plants would be set up for 50 government buildings, which will cover an area of 43,970 sq m. Thus in all, 56 lakh litres of rainwater will be collected from upcoming projects annually. Other than this, for community rainwater harvesting system, a DPR of 10 projects of government primary schools situated in villages has been submitted to NABARD Jalandhar. The total cost of the project is Rs18 lakhs, for which Rs15 lakh has come from NABARD and the remaining Rs3 lakh from Youth Football Club, Rurka Kalan. Demonstrating a new project set-up at Zila Parishad office here, Dharam Pal Sidhu, Deputy CEO, said: “We have spent nearly Rs1 lakh on installing the entire set-up, which will collect water from 500 sq m of rooftops of our building. We spent the money for we understand that it is the need of the hour and only a one-time investment.” Lupinder Kumar maintains: “Whatever investment is being made now will benefit the generations to come.”

The Tribune

2020-12-07