Real-time monitoring of groundwater in the offing

It will be implemented under National Hydrology Project

The real-time monitoring will help in better water resource management.

There will be real-time monitoring of all borewell water monitoring stations in the district under the National Hydrology Project.

There are 58 stations in the district and the groundwater table is manually monitored daily, which is not only time-consuming and labour-intensive but also prone to error.

But all the monitoring stations will be replaced with advanced automated digital system which will provide real-time data on a 24x7 basis.

This was disclosed by K.V.R. Choudhary, senior geologist at District Ground Water Office, who said that the project was a Union government scheme launched in 2016 and will be fully funded by the Centre.

He said as till date, eight monitoring stations, one each in the taluk headquarters, have switched over to the new telemetric digital system and it will soon be expanded to cover the remaining monitoring stations across Mysuru district.

Mr. Choudhary said the entire State will be covered under the project in phases. This entails converting 1,800 borewell monitoring stations across the State from a manual monitoring system to the telemetric system.

The data, he said, is automatically downloaded to computers, where it is stored and also transmitted to the central grid.

Robust data

He said real-time monitoring ensures robust data of the fluctuations in the groundwater level and this can be used for better water resource management.

In case there is excessive harnessing of groundwater in a taluk or there is a steep fall in the groundwater level during summer in any place, the available data can be used to prepare for contingency, Mr. Choudhary added. The data can also be utilised for the assessment of available water against the actual requirement and it will come in handy for agricultural crop management.

Mr. Choudhary said that predicting water availability in areas where irrigation is through borewells will enable farmers to plan their crops and other activities.

In times of drought, real-time monitoring can help in the equitable distribution of water, said Mr. Choudhary.

The new system will also monitor the rate at which water table is recharged during monsoon, he added.