Keeping the impact of El Nino phenomena on ground water storage in mind for the upcoming financial year, the Maharashtra Government has revised the policy for restoring water storage by removing silt and silty sand from all dams in the state. The decision was taken after implementing the pilot project executed in seven major irrigation projects in the State this year.

 

As per the latest Government Resolution (GR), the pilot project was implemented in seven major dams of Maharashtra including Ujjani in Solapur district, Girna in Nashik, Gosikhurd in Bhandara, Mula in Ahilyanagar, Jayakwadi in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Hatnur in Jalgaon, and Koyna in Satara. The dams were disilted by the Water Resource Department with the help of irrigation Department and the silt and silty sand were used for the rehabilitation work of those irrigation projects. There are total 3,697 water reservoir projects in the state in which 86 are major, 298 are medium and 3,313 are minor projects which comes under the jurisdiction of Water Resources Department of the State. The Southwest Monsoon is the major source of water in all these dams in the State. Due to floods in rivers, the water carries soil, silt, rock and sand which leads to reduces the storage capacity of dams.

 

To increase the capacity of reservoirs, the State Government started this pilot project in which seven major dams which constructed over major rivers in the state will be disilted and the silt will be sold to farmers to generate revenue from it. The decline in the storage capacity of these dams causes negative impact on the irrigation capacity and power generation in the State. To cater the future water requirement for the State for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation, the disilting is needed. In this regard, the GR mentioned that the Water Resource Department should submit a report to the Government by November 30 every year after conducting an annual review of the work done by the Department. After studying the report submitted by the department, the Government has revised the existing policy and implemented the process in all dams in the state.