The State government’s decision to use satellite imagery to find underground water sources in four chronically parched taluks in northern districts has turned out to be a mixed bag.
Tadavalaga in Vijayapura’s Indi taluk and Aland in Kalaburagi district, which were reeling under shortage of potable water, have become tanker-free in the recent weeks. Borewells have been sunk here in the spots identified by satellite pictures.
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In Dharwad’s Kundagol taluk, although eight underground water points were identified from satellite maps, zilla panchayat could not drill the wells as all eight points are in private properties. The points adjoin a canal at Rottigewad village. Kundagol tahsildar has been asked to either negotiate a compensation with the land-owners or acquire the lands, officials said.
The State government is using space-based imageries to locate borewells in Indi taluk, Kundagol taluk, and Afzalpur and Aland taluks of Kalaburagi.
In Indi, district officials said 11 borewells had been sunk, of which nine yielded a good average of 2 inches of water and two yielded 1 inch of water. Drilling is under way at 18 more places.
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Over the next two months, the engineering division of the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department plans to sink bore wells in 124 villages in Indi taluk alone based on satellite imageries.
The maps of locations provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) along with the survey number of the potential spot, they said, made drilling easy and speedy.
With some relief, officials said they would now concentrate on villages where water was supplied through tankers as the district administration wants to make these villages tanker-free. Supplying water by tankers, as they were doing in these villages, they said, had been a daunting task.
Although water was struck at nearly 1,000 feet, it was safe and free of arsenic and fluoride. “The success rate [of finding water based on satellite data] is around 90 per cent compared with the conventional method of using geologists on the field, where the success rate is around 60 per cent,” the officials said.
In Aland, 12 of the 18 borewells sunk in the identified spots have yielded good supply of water of 1.5 to 2 inches. The problem of drinking water has been solved to an extent in these villages. Another 25 to 30 borewells are planned using imageries from ISRO.
Superimposed maps
Chief Executive Officer of the Kalaburagi Zilla Panchayat Anirudh Sravan told The Hindu that the maps provided in earlier years were on the 1:50,000 scale. The present maps on a 1:10,000 scale gave more precise locations. The maps came superimposed with the revenue survey numbers and officials could readily identify the areas.
In Dharwad, officials of the Department of Mines and Geology advised caution before sinking wells at the identified points. They said they, too, had earlier come up with the same underground water points as ISRO, but the wells sunk there failed.