Andhra Pradesh set to face water crisis
Water consumption by irrigation, domestic, industry to increase by 50%.
Hyderabad: Given growing urbanisation and industrial growth, AP is set to face severe water crisis in the coming days.
Even though AP has 40 rivers, 12 of them being inter-state, there is a gap between the demand and supply of water to all sectors such as irrigation, domestic and Industry. Water consumption across these sectors is expected to increase by at least 50 per cent from the current 29.18 Billion Cubic Metres (BCM) to 42.68 BCM.
The biggest factor for consumption growth will be the industrial sector; demand there is expected to increase 10 times from the current 0.17 BCM to 1.78 BCM. Domestic water consumption is also likely to increase from the current 0.9 BCM to 2.01 BCM. The largest demand by volume will still be that of the agriculture sector, which is expected to increase from the current 28.11 BCM to 38.89 BCM.
At present, 96 per cent of available water is supplied for irrigation purposes. The demand from agriculture sector is estimated at 57.56 BCM. While some demand is being met by rainfall, the demand-supply gap for the agriculture sector, going by empirical calculations works out to be 11.45 BCM, reflecting shortage in the availability of water in the state.
About 24 BCM of water is lost through evaporation and run off. The current industrial and domestic sector demand-supply gap is very small with 0.05 BCM in industrial and 0.57 BCM in domestic sector. The total demand- supply gap across all sectors is estimated at 12.035 BCM.
However, the officials said that considering industrial growth is envisaged to be fast tracked in AP and significant urbanisation is expected over the next decade, the demand from industrial and domestic sectors is bound to increase.
The total surface water availability in the state at 75 per cent dependability for all river basins is 56.37 BCM including flood waters, out of which the major contributors are 24.35 BCM from Godavari, 15.06 BCM from Krishna and 2.76 BCM from Penna accounting for 82 per cent of the total surface water availability .
According to government records, the total water utilisation in the state in 2015 was 29.18 BCM of which 96 per cent was used for irrigation and only 0.6 per cent was utilised by industries. The total domestic drinking water use is about 3.25 BCM.
The total live storage capacity in AP is 28.06 BCM, the piped water coverage in urban areas is 88 per cent and fully covered habitations in rural areas are 35 per cent. The current capacity for sewage treatment facility is 288 MLD. At present, the demand-supply gap in domestic sector is 0.057 BCM of 1.48 BCM demand as only 0.91 BCM is currently supplied. With growing urbanisation, this gap is also expected to widen.