6 municipalities, over 150 habitations in Mancherial stare at drinking water crisis

Sripada Yellampalli project, the main source of drinking water reaches dead storage level.

Mancherial: Six municipalities, most of them located on the right bank of Godavari river and over 150 villages of the district, are on the brink of a drinking water crisis, with the Sripada Yellampalli project, the main source of drinking water reaching dead storage level.

The water of the Sripada Yellampalli project is meant not only for Mancherial, Mandamarri, Kyathanpalli, Chennur, Naspur and Luxettipet municipalities but also for 164 habitations of Chennur Assembly constituency. A total of 95 million litres of water, treated at a plant near Gudipet village in Hajipur mandal, is supplied to these six municipalities and villages every day.

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According to Irrigation officials, the Sripada Yellampalli project built across the Godavari river currently has 4.23 TMC of water as against a storage capacity of 20.18 TMC. The prolonged dry spell has become a cause for concern to the officials and citizens of the town as the water level in the project continues to deplete further.

As a precautionary measure and to avoid a drinking water crisis, a 700 meter-long trench was dug to divert water from the river to an intake well of the Mission Bhagiratha scheme in the project spending around Rs 7 lakh a few days ago. The trench will be useful in extracting water from the river if the water level plummets further.

K Madusudhan, executive engineer of Mission Bhagiratha (Grid), said steps were being taken to make sure that sufficient water was pumped from the intake well of the initiative without any hindrance. He stated that the water level at the well had dropped to the lowest level in the last 10 years.

Municipal commissioner A Maruthi Prasad said Rs 23.57 lakh, sanctioned to the municipality to address the problems of drinking water, were utilised to repair defunct pumps, buy new ones and resolve leakages in pipelines. As many as 17 million litres of water is provided to 27,152 households in the town every day. The town has 13,200 tap connections run by the municipality and 5,150 connections belonging to the Mission Bhagiratha scheme.