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Bhubaneswar: As live storage capacity of a reservoir is mostly utilised by industries in non-monsoon period between October and June every year, Odisha government on Monday decided to create a Water Conservation Fund (WCF) for construction of different water conservation projects.
This was decided at the cabinet meeting presided over by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here this evening.
"The WCF will be utilised in construction of major, medium and minor irrigation projects, check dams, barrages, weirs, bridge-cum-barage in different upstreams for conservation of water to be used by industries in lean period," said Chief Secretary J K Mohapatra.
Stating that a huge amount of money is required in water conservation projects, the Chief Secretary said that the industries using more than or equal to 5 cusec of water will have to make one time contribution of Rs 2.5 crore per cusec of water additional to be allocated to them.
The funds generated from the WCF will be deposited in the government fund which will ultimately be spent on creating facilities through water resources department, he said.
According to an estimation made by the water resources department, the government could generate about Rs 1,000 crore under the WCF as about 100 industries require water more than five cusec of water every year.
"The power generating companies need more water. We have already put such a clause in the MoU signed between the power generating companies and the state government," said Water Resources Secretary P K Jena.
