Moot calls for conserving subsoil water

Experts stress on measures to recharge aquifers

HYDRABAD:

The experts at a conference titled Sustainable Development in Civil Engineering drew the attention towards unbridled use of groundwater in Pakistan which has been causing fast depletion of the resource.

"There is a pressing need to monitor the use of the subsoil water and also to take measures including the artificial ones to recharge the aquifers," reads a resolution passed on the concluding day of the three-day conference organized at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro district.

The experts said the excessive use of subsoil water in Pakistan has placed the country at the fourth position after China, USA and India among the top users of aquifers in the world. The supreme court of Pakistan has although formed a committee to regulate and collect tax from the industrial consumers of subsoil water, the agricultural, commercial and residential consumers have not been brought under the net of that nascent committee.

Keeping in view the said problem, the experts at the conference offered low cost, customized and real time ground water monitoring system in addition to the artificial ground water recharge system. The experts also emphasised on the need to design earthquake resistant buildings. They suggested the use of new materials like mortar free masonry, dry stacked block masonry and waterless construction materials to save water. They suggested the use of plastic waste in various construction materials such as concrete and road pavements.

Speaking at the inaugural session, MUET Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Tauha Hussain Ali said sustainable development is not confined to construction of buildings and roads. "It implies to the overarching sustainable growth in the society." Ali apprised that the varsity has come up with a policy under which all its departments will have to become self-sustaining by collecting revenues through research and by providing expertise.

Prof Dr Douglas Barreto, who belongs to Brazil, shared that that 6.2 billion people globally have no access to clean drinking water; 3.6 billion people to drainage; 2.3 billion to sanitation and 759 million to electricity and clean energy. He told that in the developed world attention is being paid to developing cities and constructing buildings keep in view the environmental degradation which has been caused by human activity.

The conference's chairman Dr Rizwan Memon apprised that they received 128 research papers for the conference and accepted 60 after scrutiny. The researchers and scholars from Brazil, Australia and Malaysia besides their counterparts from Pakistan addressed different sessions of the conference.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2023.