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The Central Government’s Ministry of Jal Shakti released a report of the first-ever water body census on Sunday. The data revealed that there are more than 24.24 lakh water bodies in the country out of which over four lakh water bodies are not in use. Water bodies that are not in use have either dried up, or are victims of illegal construction, or have been ruined due to lack of repair. About 60% of the total water bodies are ponds, followed by tanks (15.7%), reservoirs (12.1%), water conservation schemes/percolation tanks/check dams (9.3%), lakes (0.9%) and others (2.5%). The data revealed that 97.1% (23,55,055) water bodies are in rural areas and only 2.9% (69,485) are in urban areas.
Encroachment in rural areas
Of all the water bodies, 1.6% (38,496) are reported to be encroached out of which 95.4% are in rural areas and remaining 4.6% in urban areas. Out of all encroached water bodies, 62.8% water bodies have less than 25% area under encroachment, whereas 11.8% water bodies have more than 75% area under encroachment, said the report.
According to the report, “West Bengal has the highest number of ponds & reservoirs, whereas Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of tanks, Tamil Nadu has the highest number of lakes and Maharashtra is the leading state for water conservation schemes.”
Highest use for fisheries
In terms of usage, the highest usage of water bodies across the country is for fisheries, followed by irrigation, groundwater recharge and drinking water. The census of water bodies shows that 55.2 per cent of water bodies i.e. more than 13.38 lakh are owned by private entities whereas 44.8 per cent are in the domain of public ownership like panchayats or state and central government.
The census revealed that 78 per cent (18.90 lakh) of water bodies in the country are man-made whereas 22 per cent (5.34 lakh) are natural water bodies. About 50 percent water bodies have 1000-10,000 cubic metres storage capacity and only 12.7 percent water bodies have storage capacity of more than 10,000 cubic metres