New Delhi: Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar Saturday conferred the fourth National Water Awards, 2022, to Odisha as the 2nd Best State for its achievements in the field of water resources conservation and management.
Besides, Ganjam district was awarded as the best district in the country for inefficient water resources management.
Development commissionercum-additional chief secretary Anu Garg received the award from the Vice President in presence of the Central Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat at a function organised here by the ministry in Vigyan Bhawan. Similarly, Ganjam Collector Dibya Jyoti Parida received the award for the district.
According to the state Water Resources department, more than four lakh farmers have been provided water security with creation of additional irrigation facilities of 3.2 lakh hectares. Two major projects namely Lower Indra and Upper Indravati Lift Canal; 61 mega lift irrigation projects, 2833 community LIPs and 22,500 deep bore wells have been completed, thereby ensuring geographical and social inclusiveness. Long pending issues of Subarnarekha Irrigation Project have been resolved and irrigation has been provided to 32,000 hectares, the department informed.
The irrigation efficiency of the projects has been increased by more than 20 percent through the adoption of underground pipelines in the distribution systems of all categories of irrigation projects.
“For conservation of water resources, 46 in-stream storage structures have been taken up in various rivers to conserve 49,650 hectare-meters of water with an investment of Rs11,700 crores,” informed an official.
Besides, the ground water resources of the state have also increased from 15.57 billion cubic meters in 2017 to 17.79 billion cubic meters in 2022 through various groundwater conservation measures, he added.
Further, a series of IT initiatives have been introduced by the department to bring in transparency and transformation, namely: GoWater (Water ERP) for irrigation management, project monitoring and flood forecasting; PROMISe for expediting procurement work; eCAD application software for tracking project implementation; Ama Jalashaya portal, covering all the water bodies for planning water use for multiple purposes; PINSYS, a robust database of water resources engineers for effective human resources management; WaterDox as a web-enabled interface to store documents and legacy data of the department in digital form to be accessible to users for official purpose.
By Kuldeep Singh, OP
