ABSTRACT
The increasing water demands, for different purposes has put a continuous stress on ground water resources in India. The number of ground water wells has increased from merely 4 million in 1951 to 17 million in 1997 and this has caused problems of declining ground water levels, sea water intrusion and quality deterioration. A total of 0.2 million sq.km in the country is over-exploited, and shows continuous decline of water levels. Augmentation of ground water resources through artificial recharge has thus become inescapable. It has been estimated that about 865 km3 of surplus monsoon runoff is available in 20 river basins in the country. Keeping in view various governing factors, feasible additional recharge to ground water is estimated as 214 km3 out of which 160 km3 is retrievable. A number of artificial recharge projects have been implemented in varied hydrogeological conditions. A few case studies are presented in this paper.
