By IANS,
Ghaziabad: A social activist and local councillor here Friday said that ground water was being drawn on a massive scale in Ghaziabad, and that government agencies had failed to stop this.
“Although rules exist to stop ground water extortion for commercial and industrial usages, the ground water is being procured and sold at a massive scale,” said Rajendra Tyagi.
He said, “Officials of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) are levying water resources charges on industrial units, which are extracting ground water in violation of central ground water authority guidelines.”
However, the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation, the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) and the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation Limited (UPSIDC) “have failed to stop such illegal activities,” the councillor alleged.
Tyagi claimed that due to overexploitation of ground water, its level in the city has gone down from 20 to 30 feet.