MAPUSA
Water Resources Minister Subhash Shirodkar on Wednesday told the Goa Legislative Assembly that the government was taking steps to recharge the existing dams and hoping to start work on two new dams at Dharbondora in bid to conserve water.
Shirodkar also said it was a long-time practice to utilise water from the mining pits at the time of emergency.
He said the trend of arrival of monsoon has been changing and therefore the government was taking a series of steps to conserve and rejuvenate water bodies.
He said one of the main steps was to continuously recharge the dams in the State after September when it stops overflowing. “We have observed there is a lot of seepage from the canals. We are going to tap that seepage and possibly try to recharge the dams. So if we remove 100 MLD of water from the dam for drinking or irrigation, we are trying to recoup it possibly with this water from the canals,” he said.
The WRD minister was responding to Benaulim MLA Venzy Viegas during the Question Hour.
The Benaulim MLA said the water level of Panchawadi and Anjunem dams dropped to 2.5 percent and 2.6 percent respectively in June due to delay in the onset of monsoon.
He wanted to know what steps the WRD minister would be taking to preserve additional water besides the existing storage for the next monsoon.
He said in spite of the late arrival of monsoon, Panchawadi dam had started overflowing from Tuesday and the Selaulim dam was expected to start overflowing by Thursday.
The WRD minister further informed that there were plans to build a barrage at Murida in South Goa which will have a capacity to store at least 45 lakhs of cubic meters of water but this would take at least two years.
“We are also going to tap water from the Kushawati river so that we should not rely on water from Selaulim which supplied raw water to Verna industrial estate for the last so many years. We can supply raw water to Verna from the Kushawati river,” he said.
He said there were plans to construct dams at Mankegoem and Kajuman at Dharbondora.
The Benaulim MLA wanted to know whether drinking water supplied to people from the mining pits was checked and tested and whether the government would continue with this practice in the emergency.
Shirodkar informed that the practice to pump water from the mining pits was going on for the last 10 to 15 years.
