Ggn authority to revive district's waterbodies
Gurugram: In a recent survey by Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), which was done on the directions of National Green Tribunal (NGT), there are 826 water bodies in Gurugram but owing to different factors 154 of them are beyond revival.
In order to revive the depleting water bodies in the city, the public agencies in collaboration with IIT Roorkee will now utilise the sewage treated recycled water.
According to senior officials of GMDA, the restoration of the waterbodies would include protection of the habitat as well. Since many of them are ponds located in villages, the restoration process will include finding a way to feed these waterbodies with recycled water. The survey has been done using revenue records, the survey of India report 1976, world view satellite imagery of 2011-12, and geographic information systems (GIS) data from GMDA. The authority, along with Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, took six months to complete the exercise.
Each and every waterbody, including the 124 core waterbodies, have been assigned unique codes, including a three-digit serial number and an eight-digit identifier of the location.
Earlier, the green court had directed GMDA to identify and assign a unique identification code to 123 main waterbodies in Gurugram. However, GMDA identified 826 waterbodies or water features, including village ponds under public ownership (erstwhile listed but no longer existing or completely dried up with little potential for revival of water collection), natural low-lying water collection areas, small areas with occasional waterlogging, privately-owned and government sewage/water treatment plants (STPs/WTP), and those with features included in earlier surveys.
According to the GMDA officials, 47 of the identified waterbodies are tanks, and 135 are waterbodies that have not been found in survey records and need further analysis. Moreover, there are 644 waterbodies, covering an area of approximately 1,142 acres, which also include 124 main waterbodies.
