Management and Planning of Water Resources in Ur River Watershed, Bundelkhand Region using WEAP

Abstract

Watershed Management has emerged as a sustainable strategy to conserve the natural resources i.e. water, forest and soil in an integrated manner particularly in the rainfed and drought-prone areas. Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) software is a tool for integrated water resource management and planning like, forecasting water demand, supply, inflows, outflows, water use, reuse, water quality, identification of priority areas, etc. In this study, WEAP has been applied for assessment of a range of issues like: water conservation measures, water allocation priorities, and water quality in Ur River watershed of Tikamgarh district, Madhya Pradesh, which is situated in a drought prone Bundelkhand region of India. The main purpose of the study is to simulate water demand and supply; water utilization; pollution generation and effects due to its discharge in rivers. A major portion of the watershed covers rural areas and so the main demand sites include agricultural areas and domestic consumption only. The supply sources, however, are quite a few available in various forms of rivers, ponds, reservoirs, groundwater, etc. WEAP heavily depends on data availability but, at the same time, is flexible in terms of time scale application, i.e., daily, weekly, monthly or annually. As a forecasting tool, the model has been used to generate a trend of future demand and supply of water for the next 15 years (2011-2025). Three types of scenarios have been generated including High Population Growth; Rainwater Harvesting Structures and Industrial Development to obtain the future trends. Under high population growth scenario a maximum of 14.0 million cubic meters is expected to be the unmet demand in 2025, which is almost three times the unmet demand in Reference (baseline) Scenario. It was seen that by employing 10 harvesting structures in the watershed, the unmet demands can be reduced substantially. In industrial growth scenario, the basic pattern of seasonal variation of BOD and TDS constituents was found in the river. The results generated from the model outputs will help us in predicting whether our water resources are going to suffice or not our growing water needs in future.