Bhubaneswar: The Forest and Environment department in association with the Institute of Forest Productivity, Ranchi (Jharkhand), and the Institute of Forest Biodiversity, Hyderabad (Telangana), conducted a workshop on DPR Preparation for Rejuvenation of Mahanadi and Godavari rivers through forestry interventions here Monday.
In the workshop, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) and Head of Forest Force (HoFF) Sandeep Tripathy said that the state government has started the Green Mahanadi Mission under which it had planted 78 lakh seedlings over 7,500 hectares last year. This year the target is to reach around 10,000 hectares under the mission in which around 1 crore seedlings will be raised.
The work will be coordinated by the Water Resources department, Forest department, Agriculture department among others. For monitoring there will be a cell ORSAC (Odisha Space Application Centre), he added.
“By doing so, we want to watch how our groundwater is being recharged more. A PMU is being prepared to see how this is happening,” said the Odisha PCCF.
Odisha Water Resources Secretary P K Jena stated, “We are building check dams on a large scale. Wherever we are constructing a series of check dams, we are gradually noticing that water is being stored even till April and May while earlier it was nil in January and February. Hence in 5-10 years, gradually water will get recharged down the earth and start flowing.”
He added, “Water Resources department and Soil Conservation department used to build only check dams. We weren’t having it in a coordinated way. But, in the last 4-5 months, we have held a series of meetings with other departments how to do it in a coordinated manner and in a limited area so that we can show result.”
