Singur Draining Set from December 1
Once the water level reaches 517.8 metres, the committee will conduct another inspection to take a call on whether further depletion is be required to carry out repairs.
Hyderabad: The government has decided to start emptying from December 1, the Singur reservoir, one of the drinking water supply lifelines to Hyderabad, to carry out urgent repairs without which the dam could face catastrophic failure. The project also supplies the Mission Bhagiratha and irrigation water in some districts.
A seven-member technical committee, set up on November 15 to suggest measures on the way forward for the dam reparis, on Saturday recommended that water release should start from December 1. The water level at the reservoir is to be depleted by 30 cm each day, till it reaches 517.8 metres.
It is learnt that the decision to reduce the water level was taken by the irrigation department after the technical committee, headed by Md Amjad Hussain, the ENC (general) of the irrigation department, inspected the dam on Saturday.
Once the water level reaches 517.8 metres, the committee will conduct another inspection to take a call on whether further depletion is be required to carry out repairs.
The irrigation department had earlier recommended reducing the water level to 510.6 metres as per the recommendation of the state Dam Safety Review Panel (DSRP) to allow much needed urgent repairs to the dam and its bunds to save it from a potential disastrous failure.
The DSRP panel had in June declared Singur dam status as Category-II (major deficiencies requiring prompt remedial measures), listing a series of serious problems including severe upstream slope revetment damages over a length of 796 metres, longitudinal cracks and erosion exposing the reservoir’s soil bund that was being eroded as a result, among several other problems.
Singur supplies 6.96 tmc ft of drinking water to Hyderabad city, another 5.7 tmc ft of water for the Mission Bhagiratha scheme which serves erstwhile unified Nizamabad and Medak districts. Reducing the water storage at Singur is also expected to impact agriculture in 65,000 acres, of which 40,000 fall under Singur and 25,000 under the Ghanpur anicut.