News: Second waterbody revived under Gurujal-02-01-2021
A pond in Khentawas village of Farrukhnagar block that was severely polluted and unusable was restored and inaugurated on Saturday.
It was the second natural water body to be restored under the Gurujal initative project. The Mojabad pond in Pataudi was revived in September 2020.
Minister of state (independent charge) for statistics, programme implementation and planning Rao Inderjit Singh inaugurated the restored pond site through video conference.
The 1.25-acre water body in Khentawas was among the 72 water bodies identified for restoration in different blocks of the district. Currently, 14 such water bodies in sites like Kasan, Dhaula, Wazirpur, Navada, Dharampur and Khentawas, are under restoration.
“The Khentawas pond will recharge groundwater by up to 19.7 million litres in a year,” said Shubhi Kesarwani, director, Gurujal.
The village is situated about 18kms from Gurugram and has 400 households, with a population of more than 2000. Untreated water of the village would be discharged into the pond.
The Gurujal team began the restoration work last year with desilting and levelling the pond bed.
“Thereafter, a 150 kilo litres a day (KLD) capacity sewage treatment plant (STP) was constructed at a cost of ₹70 lakh to recycle the water,” said Kesarwani.
The treatment will remove large coarse material or suspended solids before being pumped into filtration tanks and then to a holding tank before being released into the pond. The team also planted saplings of neem, sheesham, jamun, gulmohar and tamarind, among others, in an effort to beautify the pond.
Amit Khatri, deputy commissioner, said that the local population will be responsible for the maintenance of the treatment plant and pond.
Minister Rao Inderjeet Singh also supported traditional methods of water conservation to recharge groundwater.
