Advanced Residential Training Programme on Urban Groundwater Management

Dates: January 10 - 13, 2023
Course Duration: Three days (24 hours)
Course Type: Residential
Venue: Anil Agarwal Environment Training Institute (AAETI), Nimli, Rajasthan

Background
Groundwater is the most preferred source of water for various uses in India. It’s near universal availability, dependability, and low capital cost make it a reliable source of water. The increasing dependence on groundwater and indiscriminate extraction in various parts of the country, without taking into account the recharging capacities of aquifers and other environmental factors leading to the depleting water level, contamination, and mismanagement of the resource.

Groundwater is central to addressing the imploding water scarcity that is hitting both urban and rural India and is exacerbated by climate change. Understanding groundwater requires knowledge of lithosphere and potential aquifer profile, as well as the extraction, management, and governance regime. Urban groundwater management is a challenging task that is different for different levels of towns and cities in India, given the different aquifer typologies, climate, and extraction regimes.

This residential training was a part of a series of activities envisaged under a 3-year duration CSE programme – 'Capacity building initiative focusing on ‘Making Ganga basin cities water sensitive'. Under this initiative, a series of – webinars, workshops trainings (both online and residential), field exposure visits, and knowledge conclaves were aimed at engaging 1,300 + number state / municipal functionaries and other sector players. The programme was supported by National Mission for Clean Ganga and was part of the series of ongoing efforts by NMCG aimed at ensuring convergence of NamamiGange Mission with national flagship urban missions (AMRUT 2.0, Smart Cities, SBM 2.0, HRIDAY, NULM), and other missions (Atal BhujalYojana, Jal Jivan Mission, Jal Shakti Mission).

This was an Advanced urban groundwater management planning module for practitioners. The module aimed to fill a critical gap in providing a conceptual understanding of aquifers as a core to rural and urban groundwater management challenges. The course builds on the work done by practitioners and experts in India, on mapping groundwater in a few Indian cities. The course offered guidance for Planning for Urban Ground Water Management, by explaining and critiquing existing frameworks of Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) and City Water Balance (CWB).

The training followed a mixed method approach involving lectures, in-class exercises, interactive discussions, and audio-video training support to understand urban groundwater resource and their management. The participants got the opportunity to prepare a city water profile, city water balance plan, and groundwater recharge plan under the ‘Do It Yourself’ – group exercise.

Training Highlights

• Develop an understanding of the fundamental concepts of Groundwater and Aquifer.
• Assessment and Mapping of Aquifers
• Evolution, critique, and application of MAR (Managed Aquifer Recharge); WSUDP (Water Sensitive Urban Design and Planning), and CWB (City Water Balance Plan)
• Exercises/Practice in planning and designing groundwater recharge
• Develop an understanding of enabling institutional, regulatory, and policy frameworks, stakeholder mapping, and community engagement.

Training proceedings

School of Water and Waste successfully organized the first batch of Advanced Residential Training Programme on Urban Groundwater Management at Anil Agarwal Environment Training Institute (AAETI) from 10-13 January 2023. This training was the fourth residential training of the year conducted in collaboration with National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) under CSE-NMCG 3 years duration initiative of making Ganga basin cities water sensitive. The target participants for this training were from Ganga/ river basin cities all over India and we are happy to share that we received a very good response. We had a total of 39 participants (majorly government officials from municipalities, jal nigam, town and country planning office, international NGOs etc.) from different states like - Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra etc.

On the day before the training, participants arrived at CSE head office and explored the water sensitive features of the campus which include decentralized wastewater treatment system and rain water harvesting system. The visits were facilitated by Mr Jyoti Parsad and Mr Dhruv Pasricha from CSE. After this, the participants headed to the training venue.

The first day of the training commenced with a room mapping exercise. The participants were introduced to each other by an interesting and fun filling room mapping exercise. This was followed by a context setting session by the training director Mr. Depinder Singh Kapur, Director, water Team, CSE. Dr Sumita Singhal, CSE introduced the participants to the basics of ground water and the learnings of the online training of groundwater. Later the day witnessed many sessions on the basics of Urban Groundwater Management including science of groundwater management, aquifers, planning for groundwater assessment, data collection which were facilitated by the experts from Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, Pune. Mr Dhruv Pasricha, CSE presented on the various aspects of water sensitive urban design and planning at different scales for groundwater management. The day ended with the feedback form and the doubt clearing session. All the sessions were highly captivating and clubbed with brainstorming exercise and quizzes. In between, participants were also taken through AAETI campus tour to expose them to the salient features of the green campus in terms of water management.

Second day of the training started with the reflection session of the previous day and mostly included the sessions related with city water balance plan, stakeholder management and institutional and policy framework pertaining to groundwater management. The experts from Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, Pune and Ex CGWB enriched the sessions by sharing their experiences and practical challenges. These sessions were scheduled keeping in mind the AMRUT 2.0 relevance to the course and importance of groundwater in hydrological cycle. A session conducted by Prof Venkatesh from BBA University, Lucknow touched upon the importance of integration of groundwater management in city master plan. To make aware about the qualitative aspects of the groundwater, the participants were given a laboratory tour well explained and moderated by Mr Arvind.

The last day of the training was dedicated to the site visit. Participants were taken to the Hauz Khas lake to understand the importance of the lake rejuvenation in context with the urban groundwater recharge. Mr Sazid moderated the session very well and explained the details to the participants.

The training ended with the feedback from the participants about the training as well as the AAETI facilities and with the distribution of the certificates. 

Training Director

Depinder Singh Kapur
Director
Water Programme, CSE
+91-11-40616000 (Ext: 286)
Email: dkapur@cseindia.org

Training Coordinator

Dr Sumita Singhal 
Programme Manager
Water Programme
+91-11-8884646146
Email: sumita.singhal@cseindia.org