Groundwater levels have been constantly diminishing over the years in Andhra Pradesh. There are reports about heavy exploitation of groundwater, to the extent that a significant chunk of the state falls in the ‘critically polluted’ category.
The result is that even heavy rains are unable to bail out the situation. Under such circumstances, experts in the groundwater department are considering the concept of sharing of groundwater, while there is a ban on thousands of villages under the AP WALTA Act prohibiting further drilling of deep borewells.
The concept is aimed at convincing farmers with deep borewells, to share their water with others, using the sprinkler system. While the beneficiaries can bear the cost of the pipelines, the sponsor can also get to irrigate his fields using the same sprinkler system and save money. This win-win interaction between all parties can be further extended to maintenance costs of the system.
Dr K. Venugopal, joint director, groundwater department, said that if the farming community in the state accepted the idea, more borewells would not be needed, since those already existing would result in more crops and irrigation of double the area of agricultural land with the same amount of groundwater. This would also save power and aid in the slow recharge of groundwater to previous levels.
“We are heading for an acute water crisis and Telangana districts are the worst hit. The state is very vulnerable in terms of good or bad monsoons and we have been having droughts quite frequently. While affluent farmers continue to dig more wells, marginal farmers are dependent on rains or water projects for irrigation,” said another deputy director of the groundwater department. Dr Venugopal, while referring to the World Bank’s pilot project, AP Drought Adaptation Initiative (APDAI) introduced some years back, said that the same concept should be introduced on a war-footing in the state and could be executed through irrigation tanks as well.