| News: |
Flood inundates 200 villages in Assam
Date
8th July 2003, The Hitavada
The swelling Brahmaputra inundated over 200 villages Sunday night after breach in vital embankment and was threatening to submerge the densly populated Dhemaji town, officials said.
Date 1st
May 03, The
Hitavada, Abhiram Ghadyalpatil
The lowest ever citrus yield in Nagpur
and Amravati divisions has prompted the Agriculture Department of explore
cheaper and environment friendly means of water supply. Under the Mahatma Fule drive for
water conservation, the Agriculture Department plans to take up digging of farm
ponds and recharging of wells in what is traditionally known as California of
India.
Turning a crisis into an opportunity
Blame it on the rain gods or the government. But the drought is for real. Comes summer and the country witnesses a spectre of water crisis as diverse as its culture. A total of eight states have fallen foul of the rain gods so far- Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tehri Garhwal districts in Uttaranchal.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan asserts that it is only because of the sustained struggle in the Narmada valley and the systematic analysis offered by the NBA, that the consortium of Indian public financial institutions have recently been compelled to begin a review of the public financing of this private Project.
Major rivers in spate, water levels above danger mark
LUCKNOW: Water levels of the Ghaghra river in Ayodhya and the Gandak at Khadda in Kushinagar district are about 0.03 metre and 0.05 metre above the danger mark respectively.
DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Women Take Over Water and Sanitation
NEW DELHI, Apr 1 (IPS) - Fed up with bearing the brunt of dwindling water resources and non-existent sanitation, women in some parts of rural India are taking their own initiatives to solve these twin vital issues.
Effects of the Narmada verdict
THE GOVERNMENT wants us to flee like the rats as the submergence water rises, as they have done all these years in the other dams. We are not rats, we are human beings. We will resist the injustice and face the submergence imposed by the Government and the Supreme Court on the Narmada valley.
It was a gathering of the faces and the voices of the (real) rural India. On March 23-24, 2001 Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) organised a two day conference titled Mere gaon ki kahani, meri jubani, (The story of my village in my words).
While approaching Neemi, the sound of water pumps becomes prominent. The immediate reaction is to consider it as a hallucination but soon the doubt is cleared. The sound of pumps is for real. This village can impress anyone!
Rural Development - Water Harvesting
It means capturing rain where it falls or capturing the run off in your own village or town. And taking measures to keep that water clean by not allowing polluting activities to take place in the catchment.
National Water Harvesters Network (NWHN)
National Water Harvesters' Network (NWHN) is a far-reaching network that addresses water issues through people from diverse background in India and abroad. The members of NWHN are primarily professionals, bureaucrats, grassroots functionaries, interested citizens and all those committed in developing or undertaking water harvesting programme.
Harvesting: urgent need to reap rich rewards
It would be futile to state the obvious— water is the life-blood of the environment; without water no living being can survive; water plays a unique role in the traditional economy and culture of the native peoples.
For years, Dewas district in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, has been facing the grim prospect of desertification following the unregulated use of groundwater in the region. But it seems a people’s movement launched by M Mohan Rao, district magistrate, may yet manage to avert such a fate.
At least three farmers, who died recently in Falla village 28 kilometres from Jamnagar town, felt this way. They were not alone. With them were almost half a thousand others. The farmers were unhappy because the authorities had taken a decision to tap a water source, in this case the Kankavati Dam, to supply water to Jamnagar town.
THERE was a time when forests were dense here. Today, travelling by train through district Alwar of Rajasthan, you will not see too many of them. They disappeared under the railway tracks, in the form of sleepers. In the 1930s, under the influence of the British, the then maharaja of Alwar took away community ownership of forests and sold them out to contractors to obtain timber for the railroad.
IN THE hill-fort of Mandu, Madhya Pradesh, lie the ruins of a 1,400-year-old civilisation ruled by numerous dynasties, including the Mughals. Cocooned in these ruins, at 633.7 metres above sea level, is also a sophisticated and need-based water harvesting system.
India’s genius in catching rainwater lies in thousands of its invisible rural engineers who are today being edged out by the modern onslaught. In order to understand their pride and their plight, researchers of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) sought out five of the most outstanding in Leh in Ladakh, Churu and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, Kasaragod in Kerala and Madurai in Tamil Nadu.
Making water management everybody's business: Water harvesting and rural development in India
Anil Agarwal is director, and Sunita Narain deputy director, of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. They have been researching and publishing on environment and development issues for over 20 years. In 1997 they edited their fouth State of India's Environment Report entitled Dying Wisdom: Rise, Fall and Potential of India's Traditional Water Harvesting Systems.
An environmental health disaster is unfolding in West Bengal and Bangladesh. Tens of millions of persons in many districts are drinking ground water with arsenic concentrations far above acceptable levels.
This was revealed at the office of NCA (Indore), when over 600 men and women from the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and the farmers of Nimad (Madhya Pradesh) confronted them on the 6th of August with questions pertaining to the rehabilitation and other issues.
MAJOR FLOODS IN NARMADA VALLEY
As the submergence water of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is expected to rise menacingly by early hours of Tuesday( July 17), due to the large scale releases from the Bargi dam upstream, the villagers and activists camping at the Satyagraha places of Domkhedi and Jalsindhi are determined to face the submergence once again.
Another submergence has been imposed on the Narmada valley in the monsoon of 2001. The new phase of the struggle, the Satyagraha - non-violent resistance, will be launched against the dam and inhuman displacement and unjust development here and all over from July 5, 2001 at Jalsindhi (Madhya Pradesh) and Domkhedi (Maharashtra).
In the sandier tracts, the villagers of the Thar Desert had evolved an ingenious system of rainwater harvesting known as kunds or kundis. Kund, the local name given to a covered underground tank, was developed primarily for tackling drinking water problems.
MP village breaks cycle of drought
In just two heavy downpours,[86mm] the drought conditions prevailing for the last two years here have already become history. Scores of ponds, tanks and water-bunding of nullahs and a few village style roof water harvesting efforts have raised the ground water level in five to seven wells and some tube wells. " In the next one or two years, we will once again have plenty of crops," says Arjun Singh Rathore, President - Watershed Committee of the village.
Vichitra Sharma describes the collective action of a village to beat droughts
The villagers of Baloda Lakha in Madhya Pradesh have shown that the water revolution led by Anna Hazare in Ralegaon Siddhi and Rajender Singh in the districts of Alwar can become a full blown movement in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh.
Mahur village in Purandhar block of Pune district is like a green oasis in the parched, drought prone district of Maharashtra. Standing on a small hillock, for miles around green fields could be seen.
Water Harvesting - the silent crusaders
Drought in some parts of the country, notably Rajasthan and Gujarat, made big news in the months preceding the monsoon. Media was busy in reporting the gruesome picture of the first drought of the new century. Some even dubbed it the worst ever in the past 100 years.
Agitation Flares Against India's Narmada Dam
BOMBAY, India, March 26, 1999 (ENS) - Angry campaigners in India vowed to revive this country's best-known anti-dam protest to fight against what they see as the uprooting of tens of thousands of people, particularly tribals.
Prize-Winning Indian Author Censored on Narmada Dam
BOMBAY, India, July 30, 1999 (ENS) - An international body working to protect journalists has voiced its "deep concern" over what it termed "the latest efforts to suppress discussion of the environmental and social costs of Sardar Sarovar dam construction.
Thousands Arrested Protesting Maheshwar Dam
BOMBAY, India, January 12, 2000 (ENS) - Anti-dam campaigners protesting against major dam projects in the northern part of India occupied the controversial Maheshwar dam site on Tuesday morning. Thousands were arrested.
People of India Parch, Perish in Severe Drought
NEW DELHI, India, May 3, 2000 (ENS) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has made a poignant appeal to the nation seeking help to mitigate human suffering arising from one of the worst droughts to hit the country. An estimated 50 million people and over 100 million head of livestock are reeling from thirst and hunger.
Excess fluoride in water wreaks havoc in Jharkhand village
Ranchi: Tragedy has struck many a family in the Bakhari village of Jharkhand's Daltanganj district, where excess fluoride in water has left several with severe physical deformities and even paralyzed some.
In Orissa, the average rainfall is
around 1161 mm. This year however it got just 952 mm, a shortfall
of 18 per cent. Parched paddy and fallow fields at the peak of
the kharif season mark large parts of Orissa.
NEW DELHI, November 8, 2000—The Indian State Government of Kerala will increase access to clean water and sanitation services for poor rural communities through a US$65.5 million World Bank credit for the Kerala Rural Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation Project, which has been approved by the Bank's board
Reforming the Indian Rural Water Supply Sector
The Water and Sanitation Program works with partners in the field to seek innovative solutions to the obstacles faced by poor communities in obtaining sustained access to water supply and sanitation services.
Water Asia 2000 – CSE’s stall on water harvesting
Water Asia 2000: Yet another effort of CSE to sensitise people regarding the potential of water harvesting
India water purification efforts intensify
NEW DELHI, INDIA — After at least 46,500 people have been infected and 61 have died from waterborne disease, the central government yesterday reported progress has been made in the massive task of restoring clean drinking water supplies after an October 29 cyclone.
Rain water harvesting mooted for Rajasthan towns
If all goes well as per a plan mooted by the Rajasthan government, rain water will soon be harvested on the rooftops of every substantial building in the state's towns.
A Few Benefits of Water Harvesting
On average, Pima County receives about 12 inches, or one foot, of rain per year. As our community has developed, large areas of land have been changed from native desert vegetation to more impervious surfaces such as houses, driveways, roads and parking lots. When it rains, these impervious land areas shed a greater amount of rainfall, which in turn results in more runoff in area washes and the possibility of local flooding problems.
CSE regrets to announce that the National Conference on Water Pollution - with special emphasis on river pollution, scheduled for Mar 9-11, stands indefinitely postponed due to unavoidable reasons. As some essential work towards the conference has not yet been completed, no new dates have been fixed for this conference.
Further Information about Water Harvesting
Here are a few resources and reference materials we have found useful in getting started with a water harvesting project. A good first stop for additional information is the Tucson-Pima Public Library. Other libraries, various public agencies and Internet World Wide Web sites are also good sources of information.
Harvesting Rainwater on Your Property
Water harvesting is simply collecting rainwater that falls on your property and then putting it to use around your home or yard-- that's all there is to it!
Water harvesting systems can range from the simple to the complex, depending on your needs and budget. Whether you're building a new home on a single lot, designing a major subdivision, or just making a few improvements around your yard, water harvesting can be easily incorporated into your plans.