Mumbai: A report on assessing the water scarcity situation in Maharashtra based on four parameters laid down by the Union government is expected to be finalised before October 13, a state Agriculture Department official said on Sunday.
"The scarcity assessment covering sowing, soil moisture, rainfall and status of existing crops is being compiled in the state.
He said that the norms for assessment are stringent and the emphasis is on accurate data, adding that village and tehsil officials have been asked to expedite the process of data collection.
The official said that, of the four parameters, Maharashtra currently had the worst ranking in terms of rainfall.
"All the 170 tehsils in the state, generally known for very low rainfall, have received less than 75 per cent of their annual average rainfall.
Most of these tehsils are from Marathwada and north Maharashtra region, which comprise Aurangabad and Nashik revenue divisions," the official said.
The rainfall has also increased soil moisture, another parameter on the which the report is based, he said.
The official told news agency PTI that the Centre’s National Crop Forecast Centre (NCFC) will assess the data.
"The state’s report is likely to term the situation as medium level drought," the official said.
A low ranking in the report will allow the state government to approach the Centre for funds for drought relief measures, he said.

Ahmedabad: When about half the world’s population is believed to be living in potential water scarcity, a few concepts and practices of water conservation come handy for the state that boasts of water structures such as world heritage site of Rani ki Vav and practices such as water worship.
How should we connect with water and what are the ways we can act responsible towards the elixir of life?
These were some of the questions answered by ‘Water Varta,’ a multimedia exhibition organized by Living Waters Museum (LWM) at Ahmedabad University at Vechaar Utensil Museum at Vishalla.
The exhibition will continue on Sunday.
Sara Ahmed, founder of LWM, said that their idea was to make the exhibition lively especially for the younger audience.
“It is a collaborative effort with National Institute of Design and Vechaar where the utensils talk about themselves in panels and multimedia exhibition establishes connection between life, water and heritage,” she said.
Swarnika Nimje, a student of the National Institute of Design, has designed the exhibition around creative storytelling, short films, interactive media and music.
On Saturday, along with water-themed musical performances, Pradyumna Vyas, director of NID, and Abhay Mangaldas, convenor of INTACH Ahmedabad chapter, talked about aspects such as design for water and water heritage.
A film on the pots and utensils to store water was also screened on the occasion.
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Mumbai: More than 5,000 residents of the Evershine Global City in Mumbai’s Virar-West area took to the streets on Tuesday to sound their demands for a stable water supply, a necessity they have been seeking for the past five years.
"We have been facing an acute water scarcity issue since 2013 and it gets very difficult for us to manage without a stable water supply all year long," said one of the protestors.
In fact, the residents claim that the water mafia is responsible for their demands not being met.
The municipal corporation gives us lip service every single time we approach them with our request, claim the protestors.
While the municipal corporation has not commented on the complaints, residents allege that the water mafia is in cahoots with the municipal corporation of Vasai-Virar.
Loading video… ​ A number of the residents also say that not only is the water that they currently receive unfit for drinking but it also has high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) which can cause severe skin diseases.
According to reports, as many as 63 water tankers are called in every single day to the residential society which houses 63 buildings.
According to Free Press Journal, Vasai-Virar Deputy Mayor Rupesh Jadhav puts the onus of the area’s water scarcity problem on the migration of residents from Mumbai to the region which he says, makes it the fastest growing municipal corporation.
He also claimed that work on the Deherja dam in Vikramgad is underway and is likely to be completed in another two-three years.

The continuous rise in the price of diesel and increase in the price of spare parts of rig have affected the borewell rig operators.
The price hike of diesel will be an additional burden on people sinking borewells to meet the water scarcity.
District Borewell Rig Operators’ Association President Purushotham said the cost to sink borewell is all set to increase.
For the last three days, the borewell sinking operation has been suspended to bring the issue to the notice of the government.
In spite of continous increase in the diesel price, the rigging cost was not revised.
The maintenance of rig too has become expensive.
One rig machine will have 20 to 30 labourers to work.
“If we fail to rise the rigging cost, a situation might wherein we may not be able to sink borewells,” he cautioned.
He appealed to the public and farmers to cooperate.
As we engage in water supply to support agriculture activities, the government should bring rigging industry out of the purview of GST.”

This year’s monsoon gave Mumbai eight per cent fewer water stock (13,13,960 million litres) than last year (14,34,103 million litres).
Consequently, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is now looking at the measures to be taken – getting water from other source or imposing water cuts – in the coming months.
According to civic officials, the stock available in the seven lakes that supply water to the city is 90.78%, sufficient to last 304 days, as opposed to the 335-day stock needed to ensure there are no water cuts till the next monsoon.
The civic body reviews the lake levels at the start of October every year (the end of the monsoon) to plan for the entire year till the next monsoon.
We need 14.473 lakh million litres for 335 days,” said Ashok Tawadiya, chief engineer, hydraulic department of the civic body.
Currently, none of the seven lakes is filled up to 100%, compared to last year, when two of them had reached the maximum capacity.
Bhatsa, which supplies 50% of the water stock to Mumbai, has 91.53% water stock, compared to last year’s 99.12%.
Modak Sagar has 71.28% water, lower than last year’s 95.43%.
Tansa lake has 90.29% useful content (99.14% in 2017), Vihar lake has 92.54% stock, which was 99.34% last year and Tulsi lake has 93.97% stock, which was 98.84% last year.
We will prepare the lake level review report within a week and decide accordingly.

How do we sustain being able to go to the grocery store and having this wide selection of products?"
said Greenlee, an assistant professor of chemical engineering.
Greenlee has won a $4.3 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to work with farmers on ways to recycle water.
"This is a very different world than even 150 years ago, and it comes back to the availability and cleanliness and safety of water.
And ag supports all of that," said Greenlee, who joined the UA faculty in December 2015.
Greenlee’s project is one of seven receiving a total of $34 million through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Water for Food Production Systems Challenge Area.
That leaves "nontraditional" sources, some of which might include water used to wash out dairy operations or even in nonagriculture operations such as the water used to cool power plants, Dobrowolski said.
Some areas with water scarcity already routinely recycle water, but "we’re going to start using a lot more of that nontraditional water, with treatment, to grow crops," Dobrowolski said.
Initially in Arkansas, at least, she said she plans to work with dairy and hog farmers on ways to recycle water used in their operations.
Greenlee said agriculture producers work to manage water so as not to be wasteful, but water recycling so far has not become common in the state.

Follow @chimpreports Trouble is brewing in Arapai Sub County, Soroti district after residents blamed China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) for the declining water level of Arabaka valley dam on along Soroti-Moroto road.
CCCC was contracted by Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) to tarmac part of Soroti-Moroto road beginning from Soroti town up to Katakwi district bordering Karamoja region in Napak district.
But residents say their only source of water for domestic use, fishing and watering animals during prolonged drought seasons of water scarcity is drying as the construction firm uses most of the water to water the road during construction.
Michael Anoku, one of the residents in Akaikai village, says the road construction work has consumed large volumes of water from the dam using water boozers.
Mr Anoku claims that the water levels in the valley dam have drastically reduced since the road construction project started in June this year.
The LC III chairman Arapai sub county, Mr Simon Emetu, also raised concern over the matter, insisting that the dam is used for watering herds of animals by farmers.
“The water level has indeed gone down, our fear is that 2 months from now, there will be no water left,” he adds.
The LC one chairperson Akaikai village, Akaikai parish in Arapai Sub County, Mr Simon Erongu, said with the unpredictable sequence of rains, what is left in the valley dam can’t take them up to December.
When contacted, the coordinator of CCCC, Mr Charles Oriokot, said that they have requested the locals to file their complaint through the resident engineer.
Mr Oriokot added that once that is done, they will not object to the directive that will come from UNRA.

Farmers are worried over scanty rainfall in Kotba region.
It is to be mentioned that Kotba region had been the highest paddy producer in the Jashpur district for the last several years.
More paddy is procured here in comparison to other areas.
All reservoirs in the region are not filled up with the water.
In the last few years, reservoirs were inundated but this year these reservoirs are empty.
Patthalgaon and Farsabahar blocks are included in Kotba region.
According to farmers due to scanty rainfall, growth of crops has stopped.
Meanwhile, Water Resource Department SDO SK Dhameeja informed that this year due to scanty rainfall, merely 33 per cent reservoirs are inundated.
In such a situation, Water Resource Department will supply water where it is possible, said SDO.
Kotba is the only region in the district where farmers do farming entire year and try to take crops three times.

AMMAN — While water scarcity in Jordan has been widely researched, mainly from an engineering perspective, less is known from the water politics angle, a Jordanian scholar said.
During a lecture titled “Water scarcity discourses and hydro-politics in the case of Jordan”, Hussam Hussein, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kassel, Germany, explained that, as Jordan is known to be the second country in the world or, according to other research, among the four most water scarce countries in the world, there is a narrative behind those numbers.
“Who constructs this narrative in the region?
And what are the hidden interests behind this discourse?” he asked at the lecture held at the British Institute in Amman.
“Water politics can mean many different things.
It can include a movement, NGOs which shape water politics, but it can also involve state actors that sign international treaties and construct dams,” Hussein explained, adding “hydro-politics considers sharing of water resources on the surface by different state actors, [such as] rivers that cross more than one country and conflicts or cooperation between states in this regard.” “It was said by many prominent political figures that water wars will happen especially in the MENA region,” he continued.
According to Hussein, there are three pillars of hydro-hegemony and how water can be allocated: Geographic position; which means that if the country is upstream, it has an advantageous position, exploitation potential; which deals with the size of the country, infrastructure and its political power, and discoursing power which is the shaping of the way people think about water issues.
“Water scarcity can be physical and economic,” the expert continued, noting that the former means the physical lack of water while the later means insufficient industrial capacities to use available water in an efficient manner.
Regarding the Jordanian situation, Hussein said: “Water can bring people together and build bridges over water resources instead of creating new conflicts.” The scholar went on to identify the actors involved in constructing the discourse on water in Jordan and their interests, before examining the effects of the discourse on policy-options, analysing the solutions opened and closed by the discourse in the national water strategy.
Finally, he explored the effects of the deployment of the discourse on trans-boundary water governance, as well as other factors that shape Jordanian-Syrian, Jordanian-Israeli and Jordanian-Saudi hydro-political relations.

HYDERABAD – Eminent hydrologist and water expert of Pakistan Dr Hassan Abbas said that a mega vision and strong will was needed to tackle the water challenges of the country.
He expressed these remarks while addressing the participants of the graduate seminar on “Pakistan’s Water Challenges: Need for Integrated Water Resources Management”, organized by U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCAS-W) Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro on Friday.
The USPCAS-W organized the event in collaboration with the Center for Social Change (CSC).
Talking about the existing irrigation system, he said that the irrigation canals were made to provide water for agriculture but due to flood irrigation system in Pakistan, these canals caused land degradation because of waterlogging and salinity.
He suggested developing riverine good fields for clean, fresh and sustainable water supply for both agriculture and domestic purposes.
He also recommended that the businesses on the intrinsic value of water, i.e., developing water-front real estates, ecotourism, water sports, etc.
Sharing the way forward, he said that Sindh being in the lower riparian region could provide leadership for effective and efficient water governance and IWRM in the country.
In this connection, he emphasised and illustrated on efficient irrigation in Rohri canal command, inland navigation up to Kotri, urban canal for aquifer recharge and intrinsic value projects in Karachi.
The seminar was followed by the question and answer session, in which the participants asked various questions regarding the way forward for sustainable solutions to the water challenges faced by Pakistan.
He also highlighted the Indus Water Treaty and shared its pros and cons.