Hyderabad stares at water crisis

​Luxettipet (Mancherial): Sripada Yellampalli Project (SYP), which has become one of the major resources quenching the thirst of the Hyderabadis, is fast running out of water. Utmost, the reservoir could provide drinking water to the capital for another four weeks.

With the ever-increasing dependency on Godavari waters, the SYP has become pivotal for irrigation, drinking water and industrial needs of Hyderabad, Jaipur Power Plant and NTPC. The barrage, which has a storage capacity of 20.17 TMC feet, has an ayacut of 2.20 lakh acres in erstwhile Karimnagar district besides stabilising 30,000 acres in Adilabad district. The project is designed to utilise about 63 TMC feet in the first phase and about 49.5 TMC feet in the second phase.

Currently, the water level in the project is 141.5 meters against the 148 FRL (Full Reservoir Level). As on Tuesday (May 8), the project has 6.4 TMC feet water. It was around 10 TMC feet water during the corresponding period last year.

According to project officials, 248 cusecs of water per day is being released to Hyderabad, through pipeline, which is around 190 kilometres. On the other hand, 400 cusecs of water per day is being released to Singareni and Jaipur Power Plants. This apart, the NTPC in Ramagundam is drawing 121 cusecs of water per day for power generation.

With mercury hovering over 40 degree Celsius, it’s estimated that the barrage is losing 155 cusecs every day through evaporation, the project engineers said. It’s learnt that supplies need 1 TMC feet per 10 days. With the project’s dead storage level at 138 meters, only 3.20 TMC feet can be drawn from here onwards.

For the last few years, inflows in Godavari are sparse before July. Against this backdrop, the authorities have decided to utilise the remaining water judiciously.

As a result, authorities stopped water supply to Gudem Lift Irrigation Scheme (290 cusecs per day) and Vemunur pump house (250 cusecs per day) as a precautionary measure. With this, drinking water supplies to Mancherial Municipality has been restricted to once in two days.