The West Bengal ground water resources management, control and regulation act (2005)

The act aims to manage, control and regulate indiscriminate extraction of groundwater in West Bengal and to provide against its widespread contamination with arsenic, fluoride,  chloride, iron, other heavy metals or metalloids, organic and inorganic pesticides, fungicides, and rodenticides. It provides for the setting up of a State Level Authority which shall be under the administrative control of the Water Investigation and Development Department, Government of West Bengal and shall be the apex body of all the District Level Authorities and the Corporation Level Authority.

The power and duties of the State Level Authority are -

• take into consideration every aspect to manage the ground water resources in West Bengal including issuing of certificate of registration or permit in accordance with the provision of the Act;
• initiate a policy to conserve the ground water resources by way of recharging, replenishing, recycling or reusing, in a co-ordinated manner;
• create mass awareness and encourage interaction  between modern technologies and age-old practices  of ground water conservation and management by harnessing traditional knowledge in sustainable water management and dovetailing such traditional knowledge with modern technologies;
• organise people's participation and involvement in planning and actual management of ground water resources;
• keep under constant review area-specific ground water levels and publishing the revised data periodically for wide circulation for mass awareness and for devising and implementing plans and programmes of use such water;
• continuously analyse, study and review the physical, chemical, bacteriological, and virological qualities of ground water and devise and implement pragmatic strategies;
• promote and implement modern and traditional water harvesting technologies to ensure minimum extraction of ground water;
• maintain separate registers for issuing permit or certificate of registration granted by it in the manner as may be prescribed.

Read the act