Telangana, Andhra Pradesh will find it tough to quench parched throats

Hyderabad: One of the toughest problems that the Telangana and AP governments will face in 2016 will be meeting the drinking water requirements of people.

With no dependable storage, if the monsoon does not arrive early in 2016, the cities, towns and villages of the two states are going to struggle. The failure of rains in 2014 and 2015 and continuous depletion of all major reservoirs are the reasons for this crisis.

The situation in and around Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana, will be worse than Vijayawada, the capital of AP, as the water sources in Hyderabad are already running dry. The present storage of 55 TMC ft available at Srisailam Dam is the only dependable source for the two states to survive till the onset of the next monsoon.

However, a big question remains unanswered – what will happen after June if the next monsoon fails again? Osman Sagar, Himayat Sagar, Manjeera and Singur have been reported dry and supplies from these sources are hit hard. Presently Hyderabad is heavily dependent on supplies from Nagarjuna Sagar Dam where it stores water from Srisailam to cater to all the three phases of the Krishna piped scheme till June 2016.

Secondly, the Yellampally Barrage near Mancherial in Adilabad district, which draws Godavari waters, has eight TMC ft of water available, out of which 3 TMC is dead storage. For the coming six months authorities will have to depend on this source to augment supplies at 0.5 TMC ft per month. Meanwhile, several reservoirs across Godavari River, like Sriram Sagar, Nizam Sagar and Lower Manair are also already dry. It’s the same situation for the areas in AP that depend on the Krishna River for drinking water purpose.

The Krishna barrage at Vijayawada gets water from Pulichintala Dam, which again depends on waters from the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam.

However the situation could be improved at Krishna barrage by augmenting supplies from Godavari River through Pattiseema, as by March 2016 the entire Pattiseema Lift Scheme would be completed. If Godavari gets any inflows by June, which it does normally, the water can be sent to the Krishna Barrage.

In case of emergencies, opening the river sluices of Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar and Sriram Sagar cannot be ruled out.