To avert natural disasters like drought and floods, Haryana Government has planned to prepare comprehensive district-wise maps of natural flow of water.
The mapping would follow concrete steps to ensure that water reaches tail-ends of all canals, excess rainwater and overflowing ponds are tapped and lastly, all dry ponds are filled in the State.
These directions were issued by the Chief Minister Manohar lal Khattar while presiding over a meeting of Rural Development, Public Health Engineering and Irrigation Departments here on Wednesday.
Khattar directed the officers to prepare district wise comprehensive plans to fill up all the dry ponds in the rural areas of the State by channelizing the rainwater so that same could be utilized for irrigation and other purposes. Besides, he asked to constitute district and sub division level contingency teams so as to immediately deal with the problem of water logging anywhere in the State.
The Chief Minister said that maximum water goes waste during the rainy season which should be tapped and therefore; a comprehensive plan needs to be prepared for filling up all dry ponds in the rural areas so that the water could be utilised for irrigation and cattle consumption.
During the meeting, it was informed that there are about 1583 dry ponds in the State of which 309 were filled up during the previous rainy season.
He also directed the officers to conduct a survey for identifying such areas where there is no need of ponds in both rural and urban areas. He further asked the officers to make a provision for utilisation of about 1000 overflowing ponds of clean water.
The Chief Minister said that the water of these ponds could be dedicatedly utilised for irrigating the nearby fields either by laying pipelines or through water courses. He also issued instructions for the purification of contaminated water of ponds in both urban and rural areas.
It was informed that the Rural Development and Panchayats Department has initiated 1400 Project of five-pond system in the State and its positive result would soon be visible.
Manohar lal expressed concern over the complaints regarding water logging etc in different parts of the State and directed the officers to prepare any contingency plan to tackle the same.
He said that while Irrigation Department would constitute teams in rural areas, Public Health Engineering Department and Municipal Corporations would constitute such teams in urban areas. These teams would work on war footing and on getting any complaint; they would rush to the spot and rectify it.
He also directed the officers to identify flood prone areas in every district of the State and take steps well in advance to prevent any possibility of flooding in these areas.