Ghats for maintaining hygiene of Pond

As per the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), 97 percent of the 50 years average rainfall this year (2018).But there are drought like conditions in many part of the State. This implies that between heavy rainfall events, there are long dry spells.

Sitamarhi is a flood affected district but as a block, Nanpur is not  a flood hit area anymore. Only three or four Panchayats of this blocks get affected at the time of Bagmati floods. Rest Panchayats  are pond rich , there are 72 public ponds in this block. A large number of ponds out of these 72 are surrounded by habitation and roads. The surroundings create so much pressure  on some of these healthy ponds, filling with eroding soils from the roads and nearby habitation. Eroding soils are usually muddy with debris which further reduce the water capacity of pond with each pulse of sediment. At the time of filling , rainfall runoff from watershed washes sediments into pond and reduces pond volume and health. Reduced sedimentation increases the pond life span. After getting the reduced volume of the pond, it is seen the more area of the pond made encroached.

Encroachment of the wet land is big issue now a days in this area. Either it is a dried river bed or the  dried /filled pond. It is necessary to delineate the wet land from nearby  land, road and habitation to avoid law and order problem after encroachment in future.

Possible Solutions: 

• Desilting the area after regular intervals and strengthening of embankment.
• Making of a concrete ghat to fix sediment, volume of the pond and delineate the pond from nearby land/habitation.
• Construction of a small sediment retaining pond above the main pond and runoff can be directed to enter the sediment retention pond first. It can be used to settle the grey water too.

In Nanpur block of Sitamarhi district there are six ghats have been made this year through MNREGA. The sites selected by the gram panchayats are the needed most and they are trying to get more ghats in other ponds of their panchayats. Out of these six, four ghats have been completed physically as the team observed. 

Panchayats can accomplish the goal of conserving precious assets without volunteering this way and they are trying to do so.