Water woes mount for Telangana as project levels present bleak picture

The State has already requested the Karnataka government for release of six TMC to meet the drinking water needs

Hyderabad: Not to speak of irrigation which has already taken a beating in under both the Krishna basin and Godavari basin projects, the State seems certain to face the prospect of a drinking water crisis if the net quantum of water available in the major projects to support the supply system is taken into consideration.

Barring the Sripada Yellampalli project, the State has hardly been left with any major dependable source to outwit the summer challenges. Serious water woes were likely to be experienced in May and June unless the rain god comes to the rescue of the State.

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The State has already requested the Karnataka government for release of six TMC to meet the drinking water needs. Despite the fact that the Congress Party is in power in both the States, there may not be any give and take gestures in the election time. With Bengaluru city caught in the grips of an acute shortage, the Karnataka government, which had already declined the requests of Tamil Nadu for water in Cauvery basin, may not be able to apply a different yardstick to respond to the requests from Telangana, said a senior official.

The Sripada Yellampalli reservoir, as on March 20,2024, was left with a 9.01 tmc of water to serve as the major dependable source. The irrigation officials said that four to 4.5 tmc of the present storage could be drawn from the project to meet the drinking water supply needs in twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad besides their suburbs.

The project has over 16 tmc on the same day last year. But its level was dipping fast as the pumping of Godavari water from the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) was stopped.

The Mid Manair and Lower Manair have some 10.22 tmc and 5.88 tmc in their storage on Wednesday as against 19.24 tmc and 11.96 tmc they had respectively on the same day last year. Every drop in the two projects is precious in the given situation in the absence of any scope for supplementation from KLIS, they stressed.

So far as the dependability on the joint projects of TS and AP in Krishna basin is concerned – Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar would be able to yield on the whole some ten tmc of water. Officials said that about seven TMC of water would be available above the MDDL of 510 feet in the NSP for both the states to share and another six TMC could be made available by drawing water going to the level of 506 feet.