Hyderabad: In view of the precarious water situation in dams on the Krishna river in AP and TS due to scanty inflows, the Krishna River Management Board has decided to ask both states to preserve the storage only for the purpose of meeting drinking water needs, instead of planning for use for agricultural purposes.
Board member-secretary Sameer Chatterjee told this newspaper the board, during its scheduled meeting on August 22 in Amaravati, will insist that the governments limit use of water from the major dams and projects for the purpose of meeting drinking water needs. He said even in the third week of August, there were no inflows into the Krishna based projects in both the states.
“Both states need to be very vigilant at this time due to scanty inflows and take such steps against using the available storage for irrigation purpose. Both governments should keep the storage only for drinking water needs,” Mr Ch-atterjee said.
He said the board, meeting outside its headquarters for the first time. would deliberate on several issues like states following due procedure in respect of getting approvals for new projects, establishing second phase of telemetry systems at all key points on projects and canals as approved earlier.
He said that the adhoc arrangement of sharing Krishna waters between both the states for the water year — June 2017 to May 2018 — had not yet been finalised yet.
In the previous years it was agreed to share 811 thousand million cubic foot of Krishna waters between TS and AP on the ratio of 299 and 512 tmc ft.
