Anantapur: Hindupur, a leading centre for business in Rayalaseema district, has had a drinking water crisis since the last three decades. Come rain or shine, its people, numbering 1.80 lakh, have always had to buy water. The municipality spent over Rs 2 crore over the last year (from April 2015) on transportation of water alone by hiring private tankers.
About 70 tankers were hired to supply water to the colonies since last April at a cost of Rs 2 lakh per day Hindupur, though located 3 km from the banks of Penna river, which passes from the initial point of Nandi Hills in Karnataka, has no perennial sources of water.
Groundwater has been the only dependable source for the municipality, which was formed in 1920, but the situation has worsened since 1988 with the deep depletion of groundwater sources. The town has 180 municipal borewells within municipal limits, but only five were pumping about 3 inches of water.
More than 40 dried up, while the rest, even when drilling to a depth of 500 feet, could not pump water continuously. A borewell at Sreek-antapuram, that was connected to the NTR Sujala scheme, was pu-mping water for only a few hours a day. Nagarathnamma, an 85-year-old resident of Model Colony who has lived in the town for the last 70 years, said that she had experienced water scarcity for the longest time.
Kaluva Venkata Narayana, a resident of Teachers’ Colony, pointed out that the situation had turn-ed worse following Karnataka’s illicit construction of check dams across the Penna river up-stream. The Penna starts at Nandi Hills in Chikkaballapur district and passes through Gowribidanur of Karnataka and enters into AP near Hindupur.
Karnataka constructed the Kindi project and a number of diversion channels from Penna, Jayamangali and Kumudwathi, which had had an adverse impact on rain shadow zone. Organisation for the Protection of Democratic Rights state unit president K. Sreenivasulu said political apathy had also added to the crisis.
TD founder N.T. Ramarao had been elected thrice as MLA from Hindupur and twice as chief minister, but they had not initiated any proper measures to ameliorate the problem.
“The Neelakantapuram Sreerami Reddy PABR drinking water project, launched during the Congress regime by YSR, failed to meet even the minim-um needs of the people because of the poor quality of the work,” he said. The 170 km-long pipeline reports leakages every day.
"We are purchasing purified water at Rs 5 a pot even for cooking purposes following leakages and impurity, and Rs 3 for a pot of normal water,” Sreesudha, a resident of RPGT Colony, said.
The Public Health Department has said that water was not sufficient as only 3 mld had been supplied as against a demand of 10 mld. Groundwater sources would improve only if heavy floods, reported upstream, would fill the tanks at Sugur, Sreekantapuram and Surappakunta. Hindupur municipal chairman Lakshmi said they had proposed that PABR project allocate proper supply of water for the town.
