Hyderabad City stares at severe water scarcity

Hyderabad: With the south-west monsoon continuing to dodge the city, the water scarcity which gripped the city during the summer threatens to turn severe in several pockets of the capital in coming days.

According to sources, Hyderabad district witnessed 115.1 mm rainfall cumulative rainfall from June 1 to July 14 as against the normal rainfall of 161.7 mm. This is the main reason for the water levels in reservoirs dropping steeply this year. The city already witnessed a harsh summer as temperatures soared and the groundwater levels dropped significantly.

Hyderabad city people primarily get water from Osmansagar, Himayatsagar, Nagarjunasagar reservoir (Krishna River), Manjeera, Singur reservoir and the Yellampally reservoir (Godavari River).

A few years back, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) has stopped extracting water from Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar to preserve the groundwater levels in the neighboring villages of Hyderabad city.

These two reservoirs supplied water to the twin city for over a century. But now the Water Board may be forced to resort to drawal of water from these reservoirs due to deficit in overall rainfall and also in view of Manjeera and Singur reservoir going dry during the summer.

Speaking to The Hans India, V Praveen Kumar, Director (Technical), HMWS&SB, said "As against capacity of 602 million gallons per day (MGD) including Manjeera and Singur reservoirs, but right now we have 460 MGD only. We can provide water to the city as much quantity as we supplied during the summer and we can supply water for three months easily. We will get rains in between and there will not be any water issue."

The officials also added that, "We are taking around 26 MGD from Osmansagar and Himayatsagar at present and we have not got any inflows till now though rains lashed neighboring states of Karnataka and Maharashtra recently." During the summer the demand for tankers increased as there were around 20,000 to 23,000 water tankers requests pending in city in the month of June.

Even after monsoon started in city, still 5,000 water tanker requests are pending with the Water Board and officials say that they used to supply 3,800 trips of water tankers with 5000 liters capacity each in city limits. Now, they are supplying 3000 trips daily.

Says B Vijay Kumar, Director (Revenue), HMWS&SB: "There were 20,000 pending requests for tankers during summer and now it has come down to 5,000 pending requests. Requests for tankers have also come down due to cool weather and water consumption has come down."