Surface Water Management at Micro Level: The Case of NIRDPR, Hyderabad

Abstract

Watershed boundaries do not generally coincide with the boundaries of institutes, villages, and Gram Panchayats. It often renders surface water management difficult/inefficient. This paper explores the possibilities of dividing such areas internally as Micro Surface Water Management Units (MSWMUs), taking into consideration internal ridges, valleys, water inflows, and outflows to and from the units to contiguous areas. Thus, the watershed concept is applied at the micro-level, even where it does not coincide with the natural watershed boundaries. This paper is an experiment taken up within the campus of the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), Hyderabad. To test the approach for surface water management, annual runoff volume (yield) estimations were made for each MSWMU separately using Strange’s Tables. This method turned out to be a hybrid approach for natural resources management in general, and surface water management in particular, using man-made administrative boundaries along with the natural ridge and valley lines. It gives ways for better management of surface water, especially within the administrative boundaries, but not limited to institutes, villages, and Gram Panchayats. The procedures to do it in a technically smart way is the crux of this paper.