India is the largest extractor of groundwater in the world. About 55% of the water demand in our cities is met by groundwater. Indian cities use groundwater in both formal water supply and through informal water abstraction to meet the growing freshwater demand. In most cases, this is the water stored at shallow depths below the ground or in shallow aquifers. However, because of indiscriminate abstraction, several Indian cities have exhausted their shallow aquifers. While there is a tendency in cities to dig deeper for water, an easy solution would be to just manage their shallow aquifers more judiciously. 

The reason is that shallow aquifers are not only easily accessible water reserves but also relatively much quicker to recharge when compared to deep aquifers. To promote sustainable shallow aquifer management (SAM), a pilot project was initiated in 2022 under AMRUT 2.0 in 10 cities.

The overarching objective of this pilot project was to create an enabling environment for mainstreaming shallow aquifer management in a city’s water management strategy. It focuses on interventions aimed towards developing water secure cities through the restoration of the shallow (unconfined / phreatic) aquifers which have stood the test of time in India’s long-standing water history. 

The project has two components. First, to enhance the practical and action-oriented knowledge of city stakeholders on managing shallow aquifers in a scientific manner. Second, to demonstrate the use of recharge wells as one of the means for shallow aquifer management.

A variety of approaches/structures as means for shallow aquifer recharge were designed for the pilot cities, which also address the larger problems of groundwater depletion, urban flooding and contamination of groundwater reserves. The SAM project cities are Bengaluru, Chennai, Dhanbad, Gwalior, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Pune, Rajkot, and Thane.