Flood Moderation & Water Management Study in a Non-Himalayan Indian Basin

Abstract

India is one of the very few countries in the world endowed with substantial land and water resources. Being a country with predominantly monsoon climate, the rainfall is erratic, unevenly distributed in space, time and hence droughts in some parts/seasons and floods in some other parts/seasons frequently occur. Sometimes, both of them also occur simultaneously. In order to reduce the adverse impacts of floods and droughts, intra-basin surface/subsurface water management followed by inter-basin subsurface & surface water transfer is proposed to ensure water availability within the basin first, followed by transfer of basin excess water, preferably to the adjacent basin (s) within the region -having water storage capability during the regional floods, purely on a short term basis. In the present study, a sub-catchment of Subarnarekha Basin has been considered as the study area. This study focuses on the proposal of Intra-basin/Inter-basin subsurface/surface storage/transfer during a portion of the flood period. This is accomplished after creating some Intra-basin storage, by analyzing 13 years of daily discharge data -starting from 2004, for the Jamsholaghat Gauge-Discharge (G-D) site in the basin. Thus, all the four purposes -in their order of preference, viz., 1) moderation of basin flood peak; 2) creation of intrabasin surface/subsurface storage; 3) groundwater recharge and 4) short term mitigation of water scarcity in the neighboring basin (s), are expected to be achieved through this proposal.