GHAZIABAD: The Ghaziabad municipal corporation (GMC) will start installing rainwater harvesting systems in over 200 parks under its jurisdiction to save the depleting ground water level. The systems are already in place in 89 parks.
Municipal commissioner Mahendra Singh Tanwar said, “We will install rainwater harvesting systems in 200 of our parks which is in addition to the 89 parks where the system is already in place. This will help us recharge the groundwater level in the city,” Tanwar added.
The GMC has 1,246 parks under its control and Tanwar said that by next year rainwater harvesting systems will be installed in all the parks.
Meanwhile, the district administration is also planning to set up rainwater harvesting systems in all government buildings. “Of the 189 government buildings, work of installing rainwater systems has started in 36 of them and we will cover the rest of the buildings soon,” said an official from the district administration.
The groundwater table is shrinking at an alarming level in Ghaziabad. As per data from UP Ground Water department the groundwater table since 2016 is depleting at an average rate of 2.37 feet a year. Ghaziabad’s four out of five blocks are under the “notified” category where groundwater usage has exceeded its recharge capacity. Experts have termed the situation alarming and have called for stricter measures for conservation and regulation of groundwater.
“Till last year the annual groundwater depletion rate was 1.5 m but this year it is 2.3 m which is alarming to say the least. There are areas where the water table has plummeted to the level of 43 feet and if the slide continues, we will in less than a decade be staring at water scarcity,” said Gemini Rao, a city-based hydrologist.
As per data provided by UP Groundwater department, the water table was 18.7m in 2016 and in 2020, it has gone down to 30.5m, a drop of more than 11m. District’s Noornagar in Sihani area registered the steepest groundwater depletion. From 29.4 m in 2016, it dropped to 48.3m in 2020, a depletion of 18.8m followed by Vijay Nagar, which registered a depletion of 8.4m during the same period.
