4 villages get water recharging systems

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Sangrur, February 26

Voluntary development organisations and Alternative Development Initiative (ADI) with the help of PepsiCo India has constructed four groundwater recharging systems (ponds) at the cost of Rs 1.75 crore in four villages of the district with the recharging capacity of 100 million litres.

Apart from rain, the systems will also utilise waste water for recharging. The projects are constructed at Panwan, Masani, Phumanwal and Bhaktari villages under the Sustainable Water Resources Development and Management (SWDRM) programme of PepsiCo India. For water recharging, the authorities have constructed four water recharging ponds with latest techniques on village common lands in all four villages.

“Apart from the construction of ponds, our teams are giving special training to farmers to diversify lesser water guzzling crops. We are organising special trainings for them at Nabha and other places. It’s our first project in the state, while in other states we are already doing such projects under the SWDRM programme,” said Harpreet Bhatia, associate director (Manufacturing), PepsiCo India.

Before the selection of four villages, ADI teams conducted survey of 66 villages of the area. Later, special sessions were organised with the panchayats of villages to convince them to allow water recharging systems on their land.

“The water table has been going down every year. We have given them four acres from our village common land to construct water recharging system. We will run this system from tomorrow with the help of ADI volunteers,” said Hardeep Kaur, sarpanch, Masani village.

Maghar Singh, a resident of Panwan village, alleged that the state government had been making claims only on papers, but had not taken any step to recharge the groundwater. “We request more companies to start such projects to improve the groundwater table,” he said.