Shillong, Feb 10: The session on water and infrastructure development as part of the International Water Conclave highlighted the need to look into Pumped Storage Hydro power projects.
The two-day conclave ended on Saturday.
“Looking into water recycling and green energy initiatives, the hilly region should be explored for Pumped Storage Hydropower projects, wherever feasible. The projects will also have lower susceptibility to the climate change”, said one of the takeaways from the session.
The state government is exploring the initiative but land aquisition hurdles nee
Other takeaways
• Unexploited water resources potential of the promising sites shall be explored so that the storage capacity can be enhanced to cater to the needs of drinking water, irrigation, industry and hydropower generation.
• The threats of GLOF ( Glacial Lake Outburst Flood) are becoming prevalent in the hilly/himalayan region and hence the water resource projects in these regions should be designed accordingly.
• The state-of-the-art technologies such as “Digital Twins”, Google Earth Engine, Water Accounting along with the artificial intelligence and machine learning predictive models should be utilised for water resources planning and management.
• Reservoirs and natural water bodies can be integrated into the ‘National Water Bank’ to reduce the demand-supply gap scenarios. Further, such water bodies can also be used for pisciculture to generate additional revenue.
• Extreme events in hilly region are increasing which are devastating in nature and therefore the design of water related infrastructure should consider the aspects of water and climate extreme events and disasters.
• The hilly states can scale up the infrastructure for the monitoring of the water quality of rivers and water bodies where the Govt. of India can render technical assistance.
.Capacity building of State Government officials, Farmers, NGOs, etc. can be availed from central training institutes such as National Water Academy, Pune, NERIWALM, Tezpur and National Institute of Hydrology Roorkee.
