Bhopal: The two big reservoirs in Narmada valley - Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) and Indira Sagar Project (ISP) - will now have slit monitoring stations so that their storage capacity can be kept intact, an official said Sunday.

The inter-state SSP has been designed to irrigate 1.94 million hectare land and generate 1,450 MW power while the ISP is supposed to irrigate 123,000 hectare land and generate 1,000 MW power. For achieving this target, the water storage capacity of these reservoirs needs to be maintained.

"Silting, which adversely affects the storage capacity has been a big problem with man-made reservoirs. Since the only way to keep the big reservoirs alive and healthy is to check the quantity of silt flowing into it from its catchment area, it has been decided to establish silt monitoring stations fully equipped with modern technology for these reservoirs," said Narmada Valley Development Authority (NVDA) member A.K. Dubey.

The proposed silt monitoring stations, which would work as silt observatories, would have all modern equipments for measuring and recording rain water in the catchment areas and also help in scientific observations.

The scientific observations and calculations would help take proper measures for checking pesky quantities of silt so as to maintain the water holding capacity of these two reservoirs.

The New Delhi-based National Soil and Land Use Institute has suggested to establish one silt monitoring station in Dhudhasi village in SSP catchment area and another in Sarai village in ISP catchment area. An amount of Rs.1.19 million is estimated to be spent over these stations, Dubey said.

 

Source : IANS