Enterprising villagers of Koney, Haratu, loondee, Bingra & Orwai villages in latehar Sadar’s Nareshgarh have made a sand bag weir on the river Dhardharee. The villagers did this after years of wait as their demand for a weir on this river is a long pending due said one resident of Orwai village Durga Singh.
“ A weir in this river bed would change the economy of these villages where farmers will then have not to look towards the sky but the weir is like a moon for us.” said Durga Singh.
What Durga Singh said was echoed by another resident Bageshwar Bhagat who takes pride in calling himself as ‘Farmer Engineer’ said water of this Dhardharee river would so go away from us unless a weir is built here and once the weir is built here these villages will abound in multiple crops.
DC latehar Rajiv Kumar inspected the river and held parleys with the villagers on Tuesday.
Kumar said, “This water must be put to maximum use. I have seen the shramdaan of the villagers here who have put in row sand bags. I have asked my officials to draw a plan to tap this water for irrigational purposes.” He said a dam is quite necessary here e reiterated.
BDO latehar Ganesh Rajak on the other hand said DC has asked the villagers to mix cement in the bags of sand so set up in the river bed. BDO adding further said the idea of DC latehar to mix cement in sand bags is to prepare a solid row as sand cement in river water will solidify!
Sources said this river is 200 meters in width but right now water flows in its 50 meters and in these 50 meters villagers have put in 400 to 500 bags of sand to wall the water.