Water resource management plan for settlements in drought prone hilly areas: a case of Namchi city

Abstract

Urban expansion in India will be happening at a speed quite unlike anything the country has seen before. According to McKinsey report, India’s urban population is increasing and will reach to 480 million in next 20 years. With increase in this rapid urbanization and uncontrolled human interventions with environment, natural water streams including rivers, lakes and aquifers are drying up or becoming too polluted to use. Climate change is altering patterns of weather and water around the world, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others. By 2025, 2/3rd of the world’s population may face water shortages and ecosystems around the world will suffer even more. Drought is a very complex part of our climate response. It’s different from floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes because it is difficult to observe and predict. Drought stands as one of the major outcome of unusual rainfall pattern leading to drying up of land parcels in certain areas where sufficient rainwater lacked. In India, 44% of land are under different degrees of drought. Himalayan regions is one of the major reason for supplying of rain water to the plains. Despite of being feeder for the plains, this area also suffers with drought. Due to erratic rainfall, there is high run-off within the natural streams inducing water crisis situations in hilly areas during post-monsoon season. In context on India, Sikkim is located in the region with average annual rainfall of 2400mm. Despite of this, it has maximum percentage of land under exceptional drought prone category, thus can be put under investigation. Few studies have been conducted related to vulnerability and found that South district to be the most vulnerable to drought. Among these, Namchi, the fastest growing city in South district, is selected for further study. However, a growing population, urbanization and industrialization have led to considerable increase in demand of water for various purposes, e.g., domestic water supply needs, industrial requirements etc. Due to technological advancements in recent decades, the people can easily trace potable water for their needs and no one can think about how to recharge the used water. Currently Namchi is supplied only by single spring water resource located at Barmelly. This can satisfy the need of water for a limited period, but after some time thesev resources will get dry and unable to meet the city’s demand. From the technology, it is easy to draw water from one place to another place, but it is not easy from technology to produce potable water. So the purpose of the water resource planning process is to ensure security of water supply now and in the long term, taking account of increasing pressures on water supply from factors such as increasing population, climate change and environmental requirements. The study aims to prepare strategic water resource management plan for Namchi Corporation for assessment of existing water resources and evolve a technical solution towards water conservation and maintenance of the system. Literature reviews are basically helped to understand, how to proceed to prepare a water resource management plan for the city like Namchi and what are the possible proposals can make. The field work was done to obtain secondary level data from government offices like Namchi Smart City Limited and District Administrative Department in Namchi. Field visits and discussions gave an overview of complete scenario. The issues were identified by analysis of relevant data and by discussion with various stakeholders. Analysis has been done between the issue of water resource availability (in terms of surface water) and water demands of Namchi city. From the analysis the possible proposals and projects will have to be identified to improve the water resources in that region.