Author(s)

Lalit Mohan Sharma^*

S M Sehgal Foundation, Gurgaon, India.

Groundwater salinity is a widespread problem around the world with adverse consequences on health, soil quality and overall eco-systems. With the rapidly growing demands of groundwater, its exploitation is also accelerating. It is also changing the flow of the groundwater, which in turn causes ingress of sea water or intrusion of other saline groundwater or polluted water from the surrounding areas. The major consequences are scarcity of water even for domestic use and rise in the level and spread of groundwater salinity. An innovative technique of creating a pool of fresh groundwater within a saline aquifer is developed, which can address the issue. Technique is about recharging the saline aquifer with harvested rain water in such a way that recharged rain water does not get mixed with the existing saline groundwater rather it forms pool of fresh water in the saline aquifer. Water from this pool can be extracted without getting it mixed with saline groundwater. This innovation also eliminates the need of cost intensive provision of water storage structures to store rain water for fulfilling the domestic water needs. Thus, the saline aquifer unsuitable or otherwise useless for groundwater development can be used.

Rain Water Harvesting, Hydro-Static Pressure, Saline Groundwater, Pool of Fresh Water

Sharma, L. (2014) Innovation for Making Potable Water Available in Saline Groundwater Areas. Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 6, 1284-1289. doi: 10.4236/jwarp.2014.614118.