Hyderabad better off than Bengaluru with water, asserts Dana Kishore

Hyderabad: Amid insinuations on social media that Hyderabad would face a worse fate than water-starved Bengaluru in the summer, the Water Board clarified that there was no comparison between the two metros and the situation in Hyderabad was far better in terms of supply and availability of water than the Karnataka capital.

MA&UD principal secretary Dana Kishore said there was no comparison as Hyderabad was better with regard to the amount of water in the reservoirs, the supply situation, average per capita supply as against the size of the population.

He said the water board was supplying Hyderabad 2,610 million litres of water per day (MLD) to around 13 million households, while in Bengaluru about 1,460 MLD of water was being supplied to about 12.9 million population.

Dana Kishore was speaking at a review meeting with officials of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) and took stock of the situation with the officials of various divisions.

According to water board officials, the demand for water was coming due to the drying up of bore wells, caused by the groundwater table falling due to insufficient rainfall. The shortfall could be made up with supply of water by tankers.

“Most of the consumers who are ordering tankers are from the western part of the city who depend mostly on borewell water,” said an official.

Officials told Kishore that according to their survey of 1,700 houses, 65 per cent of bore wells had dried up.

Following this, MA&UD has decided to operate 838 tankers by May, up from 700 currently. More will be added if needed. The department has made arrangements to ensure the water tankers are delivered within 12 hours of an order being placed, in coming weeks.

“We will increase the tanker supply to 3.25 lakh trips per month,” said Kishore. To meet drinking water needs, 22 additional filling stations have been proposed in addition to the 78 stations besides 200 water kiosks.

The water board has also decided to press into service 18 NGOs who will reach out to around 31,000 consumers who are ordering the water tankers. Kishore directed water board managing director C. Sudarshan Reddy to ensure, all these 31,000 consumers have an operational rainwater harvesting pits in their households.

WHAT'S IN STORE

Emergency pumping arrangements:

Nagarjunasagar:

Available water: 133.71 tmc ft

Dead storage: 131.66 tmc ft

Above dead storage: 2.05 tmc ft

Requirement: 5.6 tmc ft

Sripada Yellampally:

Available water: 7.38 tmc ft

Dead storage: 3.31 tmc ft

Above dead storage: 4.07 tmc ft

Requrement: 3.33 tmc ft

(One tmc ft is a thousand million cubic feet of water, equal to the capacity of Hussainsagar)