Thane: With a water-scarcity situation in 93 villages and 183 hamlets in Thane district, especially the tribal pockets, the district administration has planned a string of initiatives to rejuvenate the old wells and other water sources here.

Thane district guardian minister Ganesh Naik held a meeting of all elected representatives and officials on Tuesday to put in place a plan of action to ensure that not a single village remains parched. Instructions were issued to all officials of the zilla parishad and the district collectorate that providing drinking water was the administration’s first priority and trucks should be requisitioned to facilitate water from tankers into the hilly and remote tribal terrain of Thane district.

Maharashtra is one of the first states to have regulated its groundwater resources. However, two decades after it introduced a law banning sinking of private borewells or deeptube wells within 500 metres of a public drinking water source, brazen extraction of water continues, even in the 16 drought-hit districts of the state.

This is reflected in the fact that 195 of the state’s 1,531 watersheds lie critically depleted, according to the state’s Groundwater Surveys and Development Agency (GSDA). Seventy-three of these are ‘overexploited’.

The State government has issued an order banning drilling of borewells in 35 taluks of the State, following over-exploitation of the water table in these places.

The Karnataka Groundwater Development: Control and Management Act, 2010, came into effect last month and sinking borewells has been banned in the following taluks:

Angul: Three summers have passed and another is round the corner since its foundation was laid, but the Rs 12-crore project at Derjang in Angul block to provide drinking water to the town has remai

BHUBANESWAR: The state government has set a target to sink 25,000 bore-wells by June this year. Besides, there are plans to construct 30,000 check dams in the next five years. These decisions were taken at a meeting chaired by chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday.

The government has so far drilled 13,000 bore-wells, while 4,500 have been provided with power connection. Naveen directed the officials to supply electricity to the remaining bore-wells. And at places where there is no electricity facility, the bore-wells should be connected to solar panels, the chief minister said.

PANJIM: The government should crack down on those engaged in illegal sale of water from their wells to tanker owners and either tax them heavily or imprison those who are violating the Goa Groundwater Regulation Act, 2003, veteran politician Dr Wilfred de Souza said.

Referring to the Act, Wily said that the water resources department is not acting against any of the offenders. “The limit of extraction of water from a well is 30,000 litres per year. If each tanker has a capacity of 3,000 to 5,000 litres and they are taking a minimum of five to six tankers a day, they will be reaching a year’s limit in one or two days. What will they do for the remaining days of the year and how are they allowed to do it,” Dr de Souza questioned.

With govt supplying free power, farmers depend more on borewells

Even as clamour for permanent irrigation project gets shriller in some parts of Karnataka, as many as 173 lift irrigation projects across the State have become ‘defunct.’ NO TAKERS? A lift irrigation project fallen into disuse in Harapanahalli taluk. According to the statistics compiled by the Minor Irrigation department, a majority of the lift irrigation projects in North Karnataka have been rendered useless depriving irrigation facility to as much as 32,425 hectares of land.

PANJIM: As further indication of the environmental devastation caused by unregulated illegal mining in the State, at least 178 wells have been sucked dry in Bicholim, Shirgao and Pissurlem over the last few years, even as these areas have been receiving adequate rainfall, say experts and environmentalists.

Villagers paid heavy costs as they had to abandon 22 wells in Bicholim, 76 in Shirgao and 80 in Pissurlem which were their traditional sources of water, as the water table beneath just slipped as illegal mines pumped thousands of litres of water out of mining pits, wasting the precious resource.