Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agricultural University Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR) has introduced a project for water conservation to be used for agricultural purposes, an official of the university told The Express Tribune on Sunday.
Under the “water harvesting project” a huge pond has been constructed to conserve rainwater, which otherwise is wasted during rainy season, Nadeem Ahmed, Principal Officer Public Relations and Publication said. The pond, according to Ahmed, would be used for water collection, conservation and for aquaculture.
The first of its kind at an educational institute, he claimed. Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar also appreciated the project during his visit to the university some days ago and showed his willingness to construct such projects in other universities across the province.
Ahmed said that the university has also initiated a project of clean drinking water named as ‘Mehr’ at the campus.
The facility aims at providing quality drinking water to students, faculty and allied personnel of the university besides a commercial venture for resource generation, he added.
An amount of Rs0.5 million has been spent on this project, which produces 10,000 bottles in a single day at the rate of 1 bottle per minute, Ahmed said.
Talking about the project, PMAS-AAUR Vice-Chancellor Dr Rai Niaz Ahmad said the university had initiated rainwater harvesting programme at its research farm on Mandra-Chakwal road. He said that the farm had been supported by high efficiency irrigation systems powered through solar panels.
Under the programme, five ponds with a total capacity of 55 acres feet have been excavated. These ponds are sufficient to irrigate an area of 150 acres and the university has prepared a programme of raising high value crops from these ponds. The data collected during a survey by university team using remote sensing technology reveals that storage capacity can be increased by excavating more ponds on 13,000 potential sites.
The VC also said that a “Rooftop rainwater harvesting model” had been developed with the cost of Rs2 million at the main campus of the university to avoid street flooding and inundation in the urban areas. He was of the view that these models could be replicated in other parts of the country and even in areas with sloppy lands.
He said that on an average rainfall in the country ranges from 200mm to 1,500mm per annum, which unfortunately leads to floods causing loss of life, economic devastation and destroys standing crops almost every year in the country.
He explained that average precipitation alone in monsoon varies from 380mm to 760mm in the Potohar region, but crop husbandry greatly suffered due to water shortage. This clearly speaks of poor management rather water scarcity, Dr Niaz said.
The vice-chancellor said that a swift but well-planned policy was the need of the hour not only to harvest rain for protection against the floods, but also to address irrigation water shortage, fast depletion of ground water, low water production in Potohar region as well as to increase overall cultivable agriculture land.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 23rd, 2014.
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