JAMMU: The residents of J K Colony Paloura Top near here have expressed their anguish and resentment against the PHE Department which has failed to construct a protection wall around the water reservoir in Paloura whose existence is in danger as the same is lying in a precarious condition after the digging of land and collapse of its side wall.

After last year’s failed rainfall dried up most wells and the depeleting water table drove the hand pumps to a trickle, farmers in the nearly 200 villages in Mann and Khatav talukas in Satara are now struggling to save their cattle. While both farmers and their livestock await government relief with parched throats, help it seems is lost somewhere in the not-so-unusual ways of bureaucracy and procurement glitches by local officials.

The district administration has taken a major initiative to rejuvenate the traditional water bodies and their inlet channels from the catchment areas at a cost of Rs 1.82 crore under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) Scheme.

Besides this, the authorities also proposed to remove the blockades in channels that connected these water bodies with the Palar River for a stretch of about 20 kms from Pallikonda to Vellore before the onset of the southwest monsoon in July.

JODHPUR: The Rajasthan High Court on Tuesday ordered halting of all mining activities in the Beri Ganga forest land, which had badly affected the catchment area of the Bal Samand Lake and its feeder canal having a length of 10 km. The court also said that the district collector, police and officials of forests and mining departments would be responsible if any mining takes place in the area in future.

Once a source of fresh water for irrigation, Kadaperi lake is now rapidly degrading

Due to unchecked pollution, abetted by government agencies, a sprawling water body in Tambaram is under siege. The Kadaperi Lake in West Tambaram, has fallen a victim to pollution caused by unchecked discharge of grey water and sullage from homes and commercial establishments, as well as effluents from the Tambaram Depot of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation.

A variety of birds flock the recovered stream within 48 hours

For the past couple of weeks Rakesh Kumar with his borrowed binoculars and relentless patience has been busy tracking and keeping record of the varieties and number of birds that have begun to flock to a small water body inside a park in Dwarka's Pochanpur village. The water body that has become home to the winged visitors has been revived in a park maintained by the Delhi Development Authority.

Baramati: In a region where farmers either work in the fields or breed cows, milk production is the indicator for the impact of the drought on the latter section. Many dairy farmers in Baramati’s so-called dry zone have sold their cows in the absence of enough water to feed them but, because of the complexity of the equations involved, supply does not reflect whatever effect that has had on production.

Baramati is divided 40:60 between the green zone of agriculture and the dry zone where water is always short and where dairy farming is the primary source of livelihood.

Government today dismissed reports that Brahmaputra river in Arunachal Pradesh has dried up and said that its average monthly flow has been better than the previous years.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Water Resources Vincent H Pala said, “There is no evidence that Brahmaputra river had dried up in the state recently.

With the mercury on a steady upward drive, officials of the forest department are back to solving the poser thrown up at them every summer: How to provide water to the animals and birds in the state’s forest areas and, more importantly, protect them from poachers and hunters. With 22 wildlife sanctuaries and four national parks covering 12,579.205 sq km, or 4.57 per cent of the state’s area, the work is not exactly child’s play.