Gorewada Lake goes dry first time in 107 years
Nagpur: With less Monsoon/rains last year and no Monsoon yet, the dams and lakes are getting dried up. Navegaon-Khairi Dam, which is around 45km from Nagpur and which supplies drinking water to entire city now almost dried up. Though right now it’s not alarming and not a cause of concern as there is enough water in Totaladoh as well as Navegaon Khairi dams to meet city’s drinking water demand for next few days.
At Gorewada Lake it is fact that because of almost dried up Dam more than a century old well is now visible in the lake bed, while at Navegaon Khairi Dam an ancient Well as well as The RaajMahal is also clearly visible.
More than Century old well is visible again at Gorewada Lake bed. It may have been dug when there used to be Village.
The RaajMahal as local people if Kuwara Bhimsen call it earlier had direct access from Parseoni and other villages.
However with Navegaon Khairi Dam built on Pench River the RaajMahal got submerged in Dam water.
Locals informed that Raaj Mahal is very much beautifully constructed. It’s masterpiece of architecture. 3/4 huge rooms, hall and creative rooftop are part of Raaj Mahal. But who used to live there in ancient times, Locals are not sure. But the ancient Well and Raaj Mahal are clearly visible and people are coming to see it. Few locals informed that they have also seen Raaj Mahal for the first time. Otherwise the Khairi Dam water level submerge it.
Sometime only in summers it’s top is visible they said. It may be mentioned here severely deficient rains last year are the prime reason for drops in water level of both Gorewada Dam in city and Navegaon Khairi Dam in Parseoni which supplies drinking water to city. Until few years ago at Gorewada Lake apart from it’s catchment areas, Gorewada Lake used to get water from Pench Reservoir (Navegaon Khairi) through its right bank canal and then it used to supplied to city after it’s treatment. However few years ago, NMC laid over 45km pipeline from Navegaon Khairi to Gorewada WTPs and stopped taking water from canal.
History of Gorewada Lake :
Gorewada Lake, which is now a days knows as Water Bank of Nagpur City Water supply has also dried up for first time in in last 107 years. Situated in North-west corner of Nagpur city it is developed with Dam of 2,350 feet. It was learnt that in 1912 lake was developed by as primary drinking water source for themselves as well as population of 1.01 lakh converting it into dam.
The lake was earlier known as Sita Gondi, as it is said that it was constructed by a woman called Sita Gondin in the then rule of Gond Raja. As Britishers (Gore) leaves there the area got name Gorewada village and the lake got it’s name Gorewada Lake. The 11 Sq mile Lakes catchment area is double than that of Ambazari Lake.
The lake was later named after Gorewada village since the water supply scheme was constructed near it. The 11 sq mile (17,702.74 sq mt) lake’s catchment area is double that of Ambazari lake. The plan to develop the lake into a reservoir and establish a water supply scheme was drawn up in 1910. NMC, which was a municipal council at that time, decided to develop Gorewada scheme to solve the water crisis prevailing in the city at that time.
Until then, Ambazari Lake had been the only source of drinking water for the city since Gandhisagar Lake (then called Shukrawari talav) was polluted and inadequate. Ambazari was constructed during Bhonsle period, some 238 years ago, but developed as drinking water reservoir under the British rule in 1872, under the Binni Scheme.
In 1982, at the time of augmentation of Nagpur water supply scheme (Pench – Phase I) it was decided to source water for additional 117 MLD capacity WTP from Pench Irrigation Project and use Gorewada Dam as balancing reservoir.
In order to achieve this, water was conveyed from Navegaon-Khairy reservoir through the right bank canal (RBC) and then pumped into Gorewada Tank, before sourcing it to new water treatment plant. Presently this RBC has also been replaced by 2.3m line laid from Navegaon-Khairy Dam via Mahadula to Gorewada lake.
In order to facilitate this arrangement and to cater for increased design discharge due to changed hydrology, a new gated weir with 4 Nos. of 10m x 3.65 m size Godbole type automatic gates and an intake arrangement with 3 Nos. of 1.2 m x 1.2 m size sluice gates and trash racks was constructed. When further augmentation schemes were implented- i.e. Pench Phase II in 1994 & Pench Phase III, stage I in 2004 the arrangement of Gorewada Lake as balancing reservoir was retained, while an arrangement for directly supplying pumped water to WTP location was also implemented.
