The Hadapokhari pond, a large water body located in Kupari under Khaira block in Balasore district, has now turned into a flatland after being subjected to several years of neglect.
The huge Hadapokhari pond is said to be witness to 300 years of history of the area.
Locals said as the pond was not renovated, it has dried up over the years and is now being used as a pastureland.
Kings used to come on hunting expeditions to the area.
One of the kings had spotted a stream cascading down from the Sarisua hill and flowing to the south of Kupari village.
The stream water stored in the pond proved to be highly useful for both people and animals.
The pond was built over a sprawling location of 10 acres at that time.
Now, the pond’s area has come down to seven or eight acres, say locals adding that it has lost its water retaining capacity.
Locals have been complaining about the water shortage over the years, but nothing has been done to sort out the problem.
Besides, the pond will be of great use for both animals and humans,” said Sarat Kumar Biswal, a local resident.

Nuclear power ‘vital’ to meet Middle East’s water demand.
"The future is not very bright," said Denis Borisov, projects manager at Roland Berger, the global strategy consultancy, speaking at AtomExpo in Moscow yesterday.
"There are many factors for the increase in water demand in the future namely the growth of population, urbanisation and a change in the patterns of consumption."
The UAE already desalinates its water in abundance with 96 per cent of domestic consumption of water coming from one of the 70 desalination plants in the country.
"Seawater desalination is the lifeline for some regions, including the Gulf," said Hamad Alkaabi, UAE ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"Nuclear is a proven technology that provides more than 16 per cent the world’s electricity in over 30 countries.
The option of combining nuclear power with seawater desalination has been proven technically and has the potential for wider commercial use in the near future.
"Considering climate change and economic growth, nuclear power generation is the most environmentally-friendly and safe as it does not have co2 emissions nor exhaust gases," he added.
"We have countries facing chronic water shortage so one way of solving that is providing them with seawater," said Cristina del Piccolo, chief technologist at Veolia Water Technologies in Italy, which has desalination plants in Sharjah, Fujairah and Abu Dhabi.
More than of half of desalination technologies are found in the Middle East, followed by 17 per cent in North America.

Today, 1 in 10 people lack access to safe water; 1 in 3 people lack access to a toilet.
Simply put, water scarcity is either the lack of enough water (quantity) or lack of access to safe water (quality).
The problem of water scarcity is a growing one.
Fresh water sustains human life and is vital for human health.
It is estimated that 783 million people do not have access to clean water and over 1.7 billion people are currently living in river basins where water use exceeds recharge.
The challenge we face now is how to effectively conserve, manage, and distribute the water we have ; “A Monk Engineer Who Is Creating Ice Stupas To Solve The Water Problems Of People In Ladakh” Sonam Wangchuk had been inspired by Chewang Norphel’s work of creating artificial glaciers.
So when he saw people struggling to meet their basic water requirements in Ladakh, he came up with a solution of creating vertical ice stupas to store water for a longer time.
The key to human settlement in this cold desert is the art of diverting water from the streams through meticulously built canals toward deserts to grow crops like barley, wheat, vegetables and trees like apricots, apples, willow and poplar.
The Karez System in Bidar One of the most unique features of Bidar is the historic ‘Karez’ system (also known as Qanat) which is a water harnessing technology that originated in Iran/Persia.
The Karez was probably directed towards developing infrastructure for a village at Naubad.

Solar-powered water pumps are fostering peace by creating a steady supply of water in Sudan.
A report by Greenpeace finds that using sewage water to cool coal-based power plants in India will not resolve recent conflicts over the energy source.
The study concludes that utilizing wastewater would not resolve conflicts over water use between utilities, farmers, and urban communities.
India Today By The Numbers 750,000 Number of children at risk of losing access to water as fighting increases in eastern Ukraine.
The water supply of 400,000 people, including 104,000 children, was cut off last week after shelling damaged two filtration systems linked to the South Donbass Water pipeline.
UNICEF 58,000 Number of families who have been displaced from Marawi City amid fighting between Islamic State and the Filipino government.
The number of people leaving Marawi City is expected to rise as the conflict enters its fourth week.
Relief Web Science, Studies, And Reports Water scarcity has caused many conflicts among tribes in Sudan, but solar powered water pumps are beginning to foster reconciliation.
Relief Web On The Radar The American Red Cross has pledged $650,000 in funding to East Africa as drought persists throughout the region.
The funds will aid local Red Cross teams in Kenya and South Sudan, including in areas of South Sudan which are facing violent conflict.

New solar technology promises safe drinking water in a compact off-grid footprint.
Many desalination plants use distillation processes, which require heating water to boiling temperature and harvesting the purified water vapors, or reverse osmosis, in which strong pumps suck energy to pressurize the liquids.
A newer option, membrane distillation, reduces the energy inputs by using saltwater heated to lower temperatures flowing on one side of a membrane while cold freshwater flows on the other.
Enter the researchers of the Rice University-based multi-institutional Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT).
When a lens is used to concentrate the sunlight striking the membrane panels, up to 6 liters (over 1.5 gallons) of clean drinking water can be produced per hour per square meter of panel.
The technology can be applied as well to cleaning up waters with other contaminants, which might give the NESMD wide applicability in industrial situations, especially where power infrastructures are not readily available.
The only question remaining is: will the US still be committed to developing these leading edge technologies?
The press release on this breakthrough notes: "Established by the National Science Foundation in 2015, NEWT aims to develop compact, mobile, off-grid water-treatment systems that can provide clean water to millions of people who lack it and make U.S. energy production more sustainable and cost-effective.
NEWT, which is expected to leverage more than $40 million in federal and industrial support over the next decade, is the first NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) in Houston and only the third in Texas since NSF began the ERC program in 1985.
NEWT focuses on applications for humanitarian emergency response, rural water systems and wastewater treatment and reuse at remote sites, including both onshore and offshore drilling platforms for oil and gas exploration" The National Science Foundation wasn’t mentioned in Trump’s original ‘skinny budget’ in March but is tagged with an 11% cut in the more fleshed out version released in May, certainly less severe than the 31% cut to EPA or 18% redlined at the National Institutes of Health.

The ground water level of the city has reached zero in many pockets and the city is dependent on private water tankers for its water supply.
Are We Moving Towards A Water Crisis?
Poor monsoon, over exploitation of groundwater and lack of policy planning forced the Latur Municipal Corporation to announce that they can provide water only once in a month.
Even by very conservative estimation, 40 per cent people in India may not have water to drink by 2030.
According to a senior official in Hyderabad Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board, the reason for the delay was that groundwater is estimated at 20 metres below the ground level in some areas and allowing such activities can aggravate the water crisis.
The government needs to look for long-term and sustainable solutions.
Nagpur has set a target of achieving 24×7 water supply along with privately funded 200 Million Litre Daily (mld) sewage treatment plant for re-use.
The sewage treatment will be re-using treated water from thermal power stations in Nagpur which will also stop contamination of nearby rivers water bodies.
While many cities have taken initiatives in this regard, harvesting rainwater alone is not enough to recharge the ground water level, given the deficit rain in most cities.
Water Facts: At least 21 Indian cities are moving towards zero ground water level by 2020 About 40 per cent people in India may not have water to drink by 2030 Water demand in India will reach 1.5 trillion cubic meters in 2030 while India’s current water supply is only 740 billion cubic meter The UN has ranked India 120th of 122 countries for water quality, About 70 per cent of the supply is contaminated

Lessons From International Water Sharing Agreements for Dealing With Climate Change.
Acknowledging that various security concerns do arise from environmental change and increasing water scarcity and variability – though nearly always short of war – the book focuses on the cooperation-inducing characteristics of international freshwater resources, the treaties that countries have negotiated to resolve their disputes, and the mechanisms codified in treaties that make agreements more or less effective.
Treaty Mechanisms and Cooperation There have been calls for more transboundary water treaties to help deal with climate change and water scarcity, and the academic literature demonstrates that there is indeed a positive relationship between the presence of a treaty and subsequent cooperation in a given basin.
The type of water allocation mechanisms codified in an agreement also matters for treaty effectiveness under conditions of water scarcity and variability.
Certain allocation mechanisms are more effective in dealing with climate change and subsequent water variability.
In particular, basins governed by agreements that include an allocation mechanism that evinces both flexibility and specificity lead to more cooperation among the basin riparians than agreements that are either too rigid in determining the allocation or too vague.
But the Grand Renaissance Dam could provide benefits to Egypt and Sudan.
The Jordan In the Jordan River Basin, the relationship between Israel and Jordan dominates the hydro-regime.
Israel would deliver to Jordan only 25 million cubic meters per year until a desalinization plant was operational so as to provide the full quota.
We use the total renewable available water resources per capita as a measure for scarcity, which is based on the fact that the amount of water in circulation is more or less fixed and the world population increases over time.

Tanzania: Authorities Pledge to Address Water Shortage in Rombo.
Rombo — Some residents of Rombo District, Kilimanjaro Region have complained that water from Rongai forests on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro benefited villagers in neighbouring Kenya than them.
They have called on the regional authorities to ensure that they get their share of the increasingly diminishing water supplies from streams originating from the mountain.
Martin Kavishe, the technical manager with Kiliwater, a private company contracted to supply water in Rombo district, said there was enough water at the source but wondered why a large share goes to Kenya.
He said there were three main sources of water from the Rongai forests alone and that with proper distribution network it can suffice the needs of consumers in three divisions for 24 hours each day.
He added, however, that water rationing has become common in Rombo District because of poor water supply network, noting that a new pipeline network to cost about one billion shillings is planned.
A villager who identified himself as Abdallah Mbogo said water scarcity in some areas of Rombo had become so acute that some villagers are forced to go to Kenya to fetch the precious liquid though most of the streams originate from their area.

Scarcity of water in Sudan is known to cause conflict between and within communities.
In total, 200,000 people from 8 localities have benefited from a steady supply of water.
The benefits of solar water pumps Water scarcity and pressure on water resources have been highlighted as sources of conflict between tribes, pastoralists, communities and famers (UNDP and UNEP 2013).
Diesel pumps, which were used for water extraction before the installation of solar pumps, are a heavy polluter with large CO2 emissions.
In terms of efficiency, solar pumps provide 8,400 liters of water per hour in the five localities.
Many villages relied on hafeers for water collection.
In many cases humans and animals were sharing the water in hafeers, due to the lack of any other viable option.
Goal 6- Clean water and sanitation- water quality significantly increases as solar powered pumps extract from a deeper level.
Conclusion The application of solar water pumps in rural areas of Sudan has contributed to peace in communities.
Heshmati, A., S. Abolhosseini and J. Altmann (2015) ‘The Energy and Environment Relationship’, ‘The Energy and Environment Relationship’, The Development of Renewable Energy Sources and its Significance for the Environment, Singapore ;: Springer,.

But what would happen if we turned on the tap and nothing came out?
Water is fundamental* to life, which makes warnings about water scarcity* and a possible global water crisis so concerning for world leaders.
He told the UN Security Council that water scarcity was already causing tensions between some nations.
Cities across the world are becoming increasingly thirsty as the demand for water grows and supply dwindles*.
This means, less than one per cent of the planet’s water is actually available to the world’s 7.5 billion people.
But Professor Young, who specialises in water issues, was “extremely optimistic” that a catastrophe can be avoided.
Australia has more than 400 big dams and the largest, the Gordon Dam in Tasmania can hold 12,450,000 megalitres of water.
Write down all of the times and reasons you use water throughout the day.
Information poster A leaked Nestle report expressed concern about the growth in meat consumption leading to a potential shortage of water.
Write a short narrative about waking up one morning and discovering there was a global water shortage.