WATERSHED MANAGEMENT - A MEANS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - A CASE STUDY

In this era of ever increasing water demands and rapidly depleting water resources coupled with overpopulation, it has become necessary to develop the means to recharge the ground water resources which are necessary for future requirements. This paper presents one such case study where large amount of rainwater is directed to recharge ground water resources. Somwar Peth is a small village located at distance of 15 Kms. from Kolhapur city. Under Social Forestry Department, some measures have been adopted to recharge the ground water resources, but it has been found that these measures don't work with full capacity in some cases. Hence it is planned to take such engineering and biological measures which will direct this extra runoff to ground water storage. The most significant feature of the work is that if such technologies are developed and adopted at larger scale in rural areas, it will prevent thousands of villages of the country from water supply by tankers. Moreover this will also help us to tackle the issue of flood which mainly occurs due to excess runoff.