Based on satellite data, NASA hydrologists have found that groundwater beneath northern India has been receding by as much as 1 foot per year over the past decade, which, in their assessment is purely due to human consumption. The Ministry of Water Resources data has also suggested that groundwater use across the nation was exceeding natural replenishment.
“Water stressed”
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At this rate it is expected that by around 2020, India will be a ‘water stressed’ state with per capita availability declining to 1600 cu m/person/year. A country is said to be water stressed when the per capita availability of water drops below 1700 cu. m/person/year
With about 97 percent to 98 percent of the water on Earth being saltwater, and most of the remaining freshwater frozen in glaciers or the polar ice caps, lakes, rivers and groundwater account for about 1 percent of the world’s potentially usable freshwater. Out of this usable fresh water only 25 percent is ground water. Ninety two per cent groundwater extracted is used in the agricultural sector, five and three per cent respectively for industrial and domestic sector.
One of the most precious commodities
No wonder, clear, fresh groundwater is fast emerging as one of the most precious commodities, specially in countries such as India.
Yet, groundwater is estimated to account for nearly 80 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban drinking water needs in India. And this groundwater level is also fast receding, and until the country gets its water management right, the problem is not likely to lessen.
Industrial use
Apart from drinking and agricultural use, groundwater is also used extensively for industrial purposes, causing pollution as untreated effluents are directly injected into the ground by industrial units, contaminating underground aquifers. Sample tests on some of the waters showed high levels of the heavy metal mercury, which caused the Minamata disaster in Japan in the 1950s. One sample had more than 268 times the mercury than is considered safe.
Groundwater in the industrial areas of India is unfit even for agriculture.
