Study of Ground Water Behaviour in the Tons Pump Canal Command Area of Karchhana Tehsil, Prayagaraj

Abstract

The study of groundwater behaviour in the Tons Pump canal command area of Karchhana Tehsil was carried out by utilizing ground water table data from 1997 to 2021 (25 years). During the study period, the pre-monsoon water table depth ranged from 3.25 m to 19.55 m, whereas the post-monsoon depth ranged from 1.71 m to 17.70 m. The water table trend in the study area during the pre-monsoon season revealed that at 83.55% of the locations having falling trend, while the remaining 16.45% experienced neither rising nor falling trend in the water table. During post-monsoon season, the water table was falling at 89.99% locations, with the rest 10.10% having neither rising nor falling trend. Therefore, the study found that the majority of the study area was experiencing water table fall due to over-exploitation of ground water in the both pre and post-monsoon season. Development stages of the groundwater utilization study from 1997 to 2021 showed that during the year 1997, all block of the study area was found under safe category.The overall utilisation of groundwater development stage was determined to be 44.93%. In 2021, the overall development stage of groundwater utilization was found to be 64.11% and the entire study area comes under safe category of groundwater utilization. It was found that groundwater levels in the study area were progressively rising. Therefore, it was necessary to enhance the surface water supply through canal systems to reduce the draft of groundwater as well as artificial groundwater recharge is necessary to arrest the groundwater at the desired level in the study area.