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Call for judicious use of water

BHUBANESWAR: Orissa was relatively more vulnerable to climate change due to its geographical location, and keeping in view the impacts it was necessary to address the issue of water resources utilisation and conservation, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said here on Wednesday.

Inaugurating the Orissa Environment Congress, Mr. Patnaik said the storage capacity of the State needs to be augmented to meet the requirements during the dry season. “Competing demands on water resources from agriculture, industries and other sectors essentially warrant an integrated water resources development and management approach,” Mr. Patnaik said.

Stating that water allocation and uses in various sectors need to be made in a wise manner, Mr. Patnaik said care should be taken to utilise each drop of water judiciously in each sector.

“Water use efficiency will have to be increased in agriculture sector. Simultaneously recycling of water has to be practiced in industrial sector. Wastage of water will have to be minimised in domestic use,” he observed.

The Chief Minister also underlined the need to bring more area under irrigation. The State has cultivable land of 61.65 lakh hectares, and so far net irrigation potential of 29.318 lakh hectares has been created through various irrigation projects.

Ongoing projects

Further, completion of the ongoing projects would add another 2.82 lakh hectares of irrigation potential by 2014, Mr. Patnaik said and added that the State government was giving importance to participatory irrigation management with active involvement of farmers.

As regards the ground water situation, Mr. Patnaik said the present level of exploitation of ground water in the State was about 26 per cent.

“There is scope for increasing groundwater use in certain areas. However, we will have to guard against over exploitation of groundwater. Groundwater needs to be used in a judicious manner. Therefore, drawl of groundwater by different users will have to be monitored closely.” Inter-linking of the rivers inside the State was also under active consideration of the government, Mr. Patnaik said. For hydro-power development in the State, multipurpose river valley projects with minimum rehabilitation and resettlement issues were being considered.

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