Centre planning fee on groundwater extraction to curb misuse by industries

The government will levy a fee on groundwater extraction from June next year to discourage misuse of water by industries and ensure a "more robust groundwater regulatory mechanism" in the country, an official release said on Thursday.

The step is likely to make packaged drinking water dearer.

The Central Ground Water Authority has notified revised guidelines for groundwater extraction which will be effective from June 1, 2019.

One of the important features of the revised guidelines is the introduction of the concept of Water Conservation Fee (WCF).

The WCF payable varies with the category of the area, type of industry and the quantum of groundwater extraction and is designed to progressively increase from safe to over-exploited areas and from low to high water consuming industries as well as with increasing quantum of groundwater extraction.

The high rates of WCF are expected to discourage setting up of new industries in over-exploited and critical areas as well as act as a deterrent to large-scale groundwater extraction by industries, especially in over-exploited and critical areas.

"The WCF would also compel industries to adopt measures relating to water use efficiency and discourage the growth of packaged drinking water units, particularly in over-exploited and critical areas," it said.

Other features of the revised guidelines include encouraging the use of recycled and treated sewage water by industries, provision of action against polluting industries, mandatory requirement of digital flow meters, piezometers and digital water level recorders.

There will be mandatory water audit by industries extracting groundwater 500 cubic meters per day or more in safe and semi-critical and 200 cubic metre per day or more in critical and over-exploited assessment units, mandatory rooftop rainwater harvesting except for specified industries and measures to be adopted to ensure prevention of groundwater contamination in premises of polluting industries/ projects.

As per the revised guidelines, agricultural users, users employing non-energised means to extract water, individual households using less than 1-inch diameter delivery pipe and armed forces establishments during operational deployment or during mobilisation in forwarding locations have been exempted from the requirement of no-objection certificate (NOC).

Other exemptions (with certain requirements) have been granted to strategic and operational infrastructure projects for armed forces, defence and paramilitary forces establishments and government water supply agencies.

India is the largest user of groundwater in the world, extracting groundwater to the tune of 253 billion cubic metre per year, which is about 25 per cent of the global groundwater extraction.