TITLE:
Innovation for Making Potable Water Available in Saline Groundwater Areas
AUTHORS:
Lalit Mohan Sharma
KEYWORDS:
Rain Water Harvesting, Hydro-Static Pressure, Saline Groundwater, Pool of Fresh Water
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Water Resource and Protection,
Vol.6 No.14,
October
20,
2014
ABSTRACT: Groundwater
salinity is a widespread problem around the world with adverse consequences on
health, soil quality and overall eco-systems. With the rapidly growing demands
of groundwater, its exploitation is also accelerating. It is also changing the
flow of the groundwater, which in turn causes ingress of sea water or intrusion
of other saline groundwater or polluted water from the surrounding areas. The
major consequences are scarcity of water even for domestic use and rise in the
level and spread of groundwater salinity. An innovative technique of creating a
pool of fresh groundwater within a saline aquifer is developed, which can
address the issue. Technique is about recharging the saline aquifer with
harvested rain water in such a way that recharged rain water does not get mixed
with the existing saline groundwater rather it forms pool of fresh water in the
saline aquifer. Water from this pool can be extracted without getting it mixed
with saline groundwater. This innovation also eliminates the need of cost
intensive provision of water storage structures to store rain water for
fulfilling the domestic water needs. Thus, the saline aquifer unsuitable or
otherwise useless for groundwater development can be used.