Water Resources
Planning
Water resources
development and management will have to be planned for a hydrological unit such
as a drainage basin as a whole or a sub-basin. Apart from traditional methods,
non-conventional methods for utilization of water should be considered, like
•
Inter-basintransfer
•
Artificial recharge
of ground water
•
Desalination of
brackish sea water
•
Roof-toprain water harvesting
Inter-basin
transfer:
Basically, it's the
movement of surface water from one river basin into another. The actual
transfer is the amount of water not returned to its source basin. The most
typical situation occurs when a water system has an intake and wastewater
discharge in different basins. But other situations also cause transfers. One
is where a system's service area covers more than one basin. Any water used up
or consumed in a portion of the service area outside of the source basin would
be considered part of a transfer (e.g. watering your yard). Transfers can also
occur between interconnected systems, where a system in one basin purchases
water from a system in another basin.
Artificial
recharge of ground water:
Artificial recharge
provides ground water users an opportunity to increase the amount of water
available during periods of high demand--typically summer months. Past interest
in artificial recharge has focused on aquifers that have declined because of
heavy use and from which existing users have been unable to obtain sufficient
water to satisfy their needs.
Desalination
of brackish sea water:
Water seems to be a
superabundant natural resource on the planet earth. However, only 0.3 per cent
of the world's total amount of water can be used as clean drinking water. Man
requires huge amounts of drinking water every day and extracts it from nature for
innumerable purposes. As natural fresh water resources are limited, sea water
plays an important part as a source for drinking water as well. In order to use
this water, it has to be desalinated. Reverse osmosis and electro dialysis is
the preferred methods for desalination of brackish sea water.
Roof-top
rain water harvesting:
In urban areas, the
roof top rain water can be conserved and used for recharge of ground water.
This approach requires connecting the outlets pipe from roof top to divert the
water to either existing well/tube wells/bore wells or specially designed
wells/ structures. The Urban housing complexes or institutional buildings have
large roof area and can be utilized for harvesting the roof top rain water to
recharge aquifer in urban areas.
One important concept
useful in water resources planning is Conjunctive or combined use
of both surface and ground water for a region has to be planned for sustainable
development incorporating quantity and quality aspects as well as environmental
considerations. Since there would be many factors influencing the decision of projects
involving conjunctive use of surface and ground water, keeping in mind the
underlying constraints, the entire system dynamics should be studied to as
detail as practically possible.
The uncertainties of
rainfall, the primary source of water, and its variability in space and time
has to be borne in mind while deciding upon the planning alternatives.
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