Kaspada Water Problems – Feb 2019

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Suhrid Foundation has been working with Kaspada school & village for last 5 years. In April 2016, Suhrid Foundation had supported the project of Kaspada villagers on building a check dam. They already had broken check dam which we had reinforced with stone, clay and plastic. This was a medium size checkdam with height of 10 ft and covering approx. 80 ft of riverbed. Kaspada had seen increase benefits of the same in next two years.

This year again, Kasapada is already facing acute water shortage from the moth of Feb itself (which typically otherwise used to experience only in the month of April). Kaspada requested us for help with their water problem. Team Suhrid visited river path running through the village.

The river flows through the village for almost the length of 1km. Government had built total of 3 check dams on this river in the village region. However, almost all three are dysfunctional due to leakages and reduced height of the reservoir (due to silting happened over the years). We had worked on one of the check dams earlier along with villagers as mentioned above and needs maintenance this year.

We feel the need of de-silting of the reservoir area of at least the first dam at the entry of the river in village. While talking to senior village folks, we understand that the entire river span has lot of silt and has resulted into reduced depth and impacting water retention and also water permeability to recharge adjoining village wells.

We see the silt is not in the form of soil – but gravel and pebbles. Also, the quantity with which this silting has happened is very high – as per village folks, the accumulated silt is around 5 feet from its original depth of the river (virtually making the check dam height of 2.5-3 feet).

We would be taking expert’s advise on various areas on – how and where would de-silted material from river be disposed? Are there any permissions required to do so? What kind of machinery required to do this kind of large de-silting projects etc.

Mann Ashram Shala

On the other note, we also wanted to evaluate possible options for some of the kids who are moving out from our 10 schools and going to other schools for their further studies starting 6th standard. We discussed various options in which we can still monitor their progress and also support as and when required. One of the prominent option was to help kids seek admission to Mann Ashram Shala, one of the best residential schools in Vikramgad region.

On our visit and talking to Head of the school and hostel supervisor, we realised, the perception of our teachers was correct. It indeed was one of the best schools. Principle of the school Mr Vatas appreciated our work in the region and promised to support us in all possible ways. This visit to school and meeting was extremely satisfying. Attaching below some of the pictures from the school.