Singur will not be able to supply drinking water after 45 days to 316 villages in Sangareddy and Medak: SE, Mission Bagiratha

Mission Bagiratha officials warned that drinking water supply to 316 villages in Sangareddy and Medak districts could be affected within 45 days unless the Manjeera river receives fresh inflows. Authorities have prepared contingency plans, including water tankers and additional borewells

Sangareddy: Sounding an alarm, Superintending Engineer (SE), Mission Bagiratha, Sangareddy and Medak districts, N Raghuveer said drinking water supply to 316 villages could be affected within 45 days unless the Manjeera river received fresh inflows. Of these, 275 villages are in Sangareddy district and the remaining 41 are in Medak district.

The Singur project currently has 4.29 TMCft of water against its full storage capacity of 29.91 TMCft. Drawing water to meet drinking water needs would not be possible once the storage drops below 3 TMCft.

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Talking about the contingency plan prepared by his department to tackle the El Nino pattern during a joint review meeting of Sangareddy and Medak districts on Monday, Raghuveer said the available water would have been sufficient for only 30 days. However, he said the rains over the last couple of days had brought some fresh inflows into the Singur project.

Stating that drinking water would be supplied to 1,758 habitations in the two districts by drawing water from the Singur, Manjeera and Mallanna Sagar projects, the Superintending Engineer said the existing water in Singur would be sufficient for only three months for Hyderabad and parts of Sangareddy, Medak and Kamareddy districts. He said a contingency plan had been prepared with Rs 20 crore and Rs 41 crore for Medak and Sangareddy districts, respectively, to arrange water tankers by purchasing water from borewells. He added that additional borewells would also be drilled to meet drinking water needs.

Congress MLA from Narayankhed Patlolla Sanjeeva Reddy said 40 per cent of the habitations in the constituency were already not receiving water through Mission Bagiratha. Even though officials had taken some alternative measures to meet drinking water needs, he said the borewells had started drying up.

After officials and elected representatives said the borewells had started drying up, Minister G Vivekananda intervened and suggested that officials take up the recharging of borewells on a war footing and also dig soak pits to tackle the situation. He asked them to prepare plans to take up the work under Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission.