IIT Ropar and Pb Govt steps up cooperation on water resources management in Punjab
KS Diwan/ royalpatiala.in/ Ropar
Memorandum of Understandings were today exchanged between IIT Ropar and Government of Punjab. IIT Ropar has stepped up cooperation with the Department of Science, Technology & Environment, Government of Punjab on water resource management in Punjab. The MoU is signed to jointly address the issues of state importance pertaining to the environment, climate change and public health to achieve the overall goals and objectives of newly launched Mission Tandrust Punjab 2.0.
Both have expressed the desire to work together to promote collaborative programmes to make Punjab the R&I Hub and the healthiest State with healthy environment so as to enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of the State towards emerging challenges.
Water is a critical area for cooperation between the member parties. The MoU tackles a set of topics as part of priority areas including River Basin Management, assessment of environmental flows, and the development of a water quality dashboard for targeted decision making, groundwater management, irrigation efficiency and reuse of treated wastewater. Research and the introduction of innovative technologies also fall in the ambit of the programme. Also IIT Ropar will undertake faculty development programmes to teach innovations to other institutions in the neighbourhood/ region. The MoU also taken up objective to take up short-term student projects on issues of mutual interests as per State-specific needs & priorities.
Prof. S.K. Das, Director, IIT Ropar said, “Punjab is an agrarian state and is a water stressed state too, so being an institute of national importance and following the mandate of the evolution of Civil Engineering Department in IIT Ropar, we are already working on several research projects related to water resources, water logging, deteriorating water quality, floods, droughts, siltation in the rivers, changing rainfall patterns accentuated by impending climate change.”
Divulging more, he added, “IIT Ropar has allocated 2.5 acres of land in the new campus for setting up a state-of-art Soil-Water-Plant lab with its own funds and taking up objective-oriented initiatives in the area of water resources.”
The Institute has acquired equipment’s including Automatic Weather Station (automated version of the traditional weather station) and Lysimeter (an apparatus for measuring changes due to moisture loss, percolation, etc. undergone by a body of soil under controlled conditions) which would help in determining soil moisture depletion and the consequent irrigation demands in real time. IIT Ropar plans to conduct Lysimeter experiments to arrive at realistic estimates of the groundwater levels in the area. Further, experimental farms are being considered for generating optimal irrigation schedules and plant spacings, and for analyzing various water-saving irrigation models.
Rakesh Kumar Verma IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Science, Technology & Environment, Government of Punjab said, “To mitigate the looming water crisis in the State, the Department is collaborating with IIT Ropar in the implementation of water conservation interventions of the State. To manage the demand, the focus of the Department is on improving water use efficiency in the agriculture sector as well as for the industrial sector. The collaboration will also address to regulate and control groundwater usage in the industrial sector and making a recharge, recycle and reuse mandatory to optimize the growing freshwater requirement. This is the beginning of the collaboration; we are also looking forward for Solid Waste Management solutions from IIT Ropar.”
At IIT Ropar, Recently, a Bathymetry facility has been set up which comprises a remotely operated boat with ecosounder. This facility permits field measurement of sedimentation in reservoirs created upstream of dams.
IIT Ropar has been looking at the regional groundwater contamination issues viz. Uranium contamination of groundwater in Malwa region. The study aims at understanding the geochemical controls of the uranium contamination scenario in Malwa region. The results of this study would aid in better understanding of the subsurface interaction of aqueous uranium with the aquifer material which can provide insights for groundwater treatment strategies.
Another major research project is the Indo-UK water quality project funded through the prestigious Newton-Bhabha grant. IIT Ropar is a partner institution in this multi-institutional effort that focuses on understanding the impact of rainwater harvesting structures on groundwater quality. The project aims at addressing the enhanced levels of fluoride in groundwater as impacted by the existing managed aquifer recharge structures located in the state of Rajasthan.
