coimbatore the ground water level across all blocks in coimbatore are either critical or overexploited as per official statistics with two more months of summer to go the authorities have already declared seven of the 12 blocks as overexploited and the rest semicritical as per a ground water assessment done in the past few months only two of the 12 blocks sultanpet and anaimalai have water levels in the safe limits as per the report from the central ground water authority and the ground water year book on tamil nadu comparing the water levels from 2004 to 2015 the increase in ground water level in the state was 30 but the fall has been 70 the city received rainfall only for 5760 days in a year borewells are being set up at an alarming rate even in areas where the water depth was over 500ft said an official as per the report in 2004 only 8 of the wells had water below 4m depth but in 2013 it became 16 and in 2014 it became 26 thondamuthur area alone which showed a water level of 4106m in may 2014 became 4358m in august the same year officials said one of the major reasons for the drastic fall in the ground water level was unauthorized drinking water packaging units and industries that were denied clearances but continued to function many had approached the court and acquired a stay as well said an official a farmer said that unless monsoon fails the state the government would not realize the gravity of the issue a udayakumar a resident of a s kulam said 60 of farmers in his area continued to do open irrigation not switching to drip irrigation only because we get enough water from pillur scheme there is no major scarcityever since rain water harvesting structures were made mandatory it has helped raise the ground water level considerably after 2007 the government needs to put in much more effort an action plan needs to be prepared and steps should be taken to improve ground water said an official officials said that they had taken several measures like building check dams to improve ground water rechargefarmers of sulur were recently booked twice while drawing water illegally from the irrigation canals the farmers and residents said that they received water only once in 15 days and were highly dependent on bore water but now even that seemed to have dried upramachandran from vellamadai village said that the rainfall in his village was minimal last year i had to dig up to 1000ft to get bore water for my farm he said another farmer from periyanaikenpalyam duraisamy said that real estate development has depleted the ground water in his area a new school was being constructed here and the owners were surprised when even at 400ft they got very little water said duraisamy