The Chhattisgarh Government will soon launch a ‘Solar Community Irrigation Project’ for drawing water extracted using solar pumps for supplying to the agricultural land of farmers across the State.
The pipeline extension project to be executed by Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency (CREDA) would be undertaken shortly, officials informed.
Notably, in order to ensure sufficient supply of potable water in drought-hit areas of Chhattisgarh during summer months, Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) had installed a total of 4402 hand-pumps in the last six months, officials informed.
The installation of hand-pumps was carried out between October 15, 2015 and April 15 this year, said Department
officials.“During this period, riser pipes measuring around 55000 meter were provided to around 12000 hand-pumps which recorded decline in water level. Moreover, riser pipes measuring around 77000 meters have been changed in over 19000 hand-pumps,” said officials.
According to officials, of 242 rural ‘Nal Jal Yojanas’ are non operational in the the State due to some technical reasons while water supply through 185 Nal Jal Yojanas have been started by fixing the problem. Besides, the Department has arranged about 126 maintenance vehicles (76 rented maintenance vehicles and 50 departmental maintenance vehicles) for ensuring requisite repair and maintenance to hand-pumps and Nal Jal Yojanas.
Single phase power pumps have been deployed for the task of fetching water from hand-pumps which recorded decline in level of ground water, informed officials, adding that solar pumps have been installed in forest villages and non-electrified villages for the purpose. Officials further informed that the Department is recharging hand-pumps through Hydrofracturing technique and the same has been done in over 924 tube-wells and 554 tube-wells were successfully recharged.
As per information received, the Department has chalked out an action plan to the tune of around Rs 32 crore for dealing with the problem of water scarcity during summer. Under this action plan, at least single operational water source will be provided to every settlement across the State.