Singur Dam Repair Plan Delayed Amid Drinking Water Concerns

Hyderabad: Officials have not commenced depletion of water at the Singur dam from December 1 as scheduled, to take up repairs to address potentially catastrophic issues that could imperil the dam’s existence.

The decision to deplete the dam of water appears to have collided with the inevitable realisation that without the project on the Maneera river in the picture, a good portion of drinking water supply to Hyderabad, and parts of erstwhile unified Medak and Nizamabad districts will be affected for several months, if not a year or two.

A seven-member technical committee set up to study the problem is now grappling with the task of finding a via media that will ‘address’ the need for desperately urgent repairs that the dam needs, while at the same time doesn’t ring alarm bells among the public over potential threat to their drinking water supply.

“It is a hard choice to make, pretty much like the proverbial option of picking between the devil and the deep sea,” according to a source familiar with discussions on the issue.

The Singur project plays a key role in drinking water supply to Hyderabad, sending around 6.96 tmc ft of water per year. It supplies another 5.7 tmc ft for the Mission Bhagiratha scheme in erstwhile unified Nizamabad and Medak districts. In addition, the Singur dam is also the irrigation source for around 65,000 acres of agricultural land.

Following a no-holds-barred advice from the irrigation department in November last that the dam faced an ‘imminent threat’ and needed to be emptied for repairs to be taken up, the government set up a committee of technical experts to suggest possible courses of action. Now, the future of Singur dam likely hangs on the decision the committee recommends to the government.

Left to the irrigation department, sources said that it would like to see the reservoir emptied so a full inspection can be taken up and repair and rehabilitation works can begin in earnest.

“Repairs cannot be taken up on a piecemeal manner, they need to be comprehensive. For instance, stretches of the dam’s bund need serious repairs which cannot be done in a top-down manner, which requires the reservoir to be emptied as first asked by the irrigation department,” a dam safety expert told Deccan Chronicle.

“But that will mean taking a huge slice of drinking water source, particularly to Hyderabad, and with no alternate sources that can supplement what will be lost. And that is the problem at hand,” a senior government official said.