Scientists for development of traditional water

Scientists, who attended the ongoing Environmental Congress, being conducted by the Centre for Environment and Development and the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, has called for the development of traditional water resources to meet the community-level water requirements of the State. The groundwater table in the State is under severe stress and is in need of urgent conservation methods, they said. In a paper, titled ‘Traditional water resources in Kerala’, the authors Kamalakshan Kokkal and Aswathy M V said that irrecoverable ground water depletion had been reported from the districts of Kasargod, Kannur, Palakkad, Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram. It is an irony that districts receiving copious rainfall like Kasargod is experiencing a rising stress on groundwater resources. “The groundwater in Kasargod has gone down by at least 4 metres. The unscientific use of water such as excessive irrigation and drilling borewells within the existing wells contribute to the problem,” said Kamalakshan Kokkal. The water conservation methods of yore include the surangams, oorani, valkinar, nathakkom and kavalakinar among many others. While surangams can be built only in areas with a typical laterite rock, others such as the oorani can be adopted anywhere. The oorani is a ground water extraction system, that consists of larger pond for collection of rainwater and one or more wells dug around it. The water from the large pond recharges the wells. The paper also discussed the various ponds, springs, traditional water conservation and water diversion methods, different types of checkdams, various traditional irrigation practices and the different ways of water resource management. The Congress also discussed the urban water scenario and a paper was presented on ‘Drinking water scenario of the Thiruvanathapuram district: A Vision for 2025’ by a team from the KU Department of Future Studies and the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS). The paper discussed the demand-supply gap in drinking water and how the scarcity could be effectively solved. As it would be impossible for the Kerala Water Authority to meet the huge increase in demand in future, the authors have suggested rainwater harvesting as a cost-effective technology that can be adopted by all categories of consumers. Some of the other interesting papers presented at the Congress include the ‘Heavy metal content in the water and aquatic macrophytes of lower reaches of Periyar river’, Pricing of Water in Kerala, Prevalence and enhances survival of indicator bacteria and enteric pathogens in Kumarakom region of Vembanad lake’ and ‘Watershed Management of Parambikulam Wildlife Sanctuary’. There was a special session on urban waste water management on Friday, by a panel consisting of E J James, Water Institute director, Karunya University, A R V Pillai, State quality co-ordinator, N C Narayanan, associate professor, IIT Mumbai, V Sreekumar, Corporation Health Officer and M Dileep Kumar from the Suchitwa Mission, Kerala.

The New Indian Express, 22nd August 2009