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Summer’s here: Water crisis hits villages
Many villages in Telangana state are facing drinking water shortage even before the onset of summer as water sources have dried up and water is being released sparingly through the water supply schemes.
Hyderabad: Many villages in Telangana state are facing drinking water shortage even before the onset of summer as water sources have dried up and water is being released sparingly through the water supply schemes.
Most of the villages are supplied with water twice or thrice in a week and that too in meager volumes. The supplied water is not sufficient even for a day and the people are depending on the open wells and on the agriculture borewells located on the outskirts of the villages.
The shortage has taken place as the borewells, which are main source for water supply, have dried up. Even the sources of the surface water have also dried up at several places. However, most of the villages are provided with water through the borewells.
There are as many as 1.13 lakh pumpsets in 10,000 villages out of which 2,000 are not functioning. Half of them are providing water once in two days or three days and water is drawn cautiously.
With this, the public water supply schemes have become non-functional forcing the officials to make emergency arrangements for the supply of drinking water. Officials have been hiring agriculture borewells to supply water to the villages. The officials have been directed by collectors to hire tankers to supply water to villages.
Continuous exploitation of groundwater has depleted water levels to dismal levels. Most of the public water supply schemes have been planned with the borewells. They have been used throughout the year without taking measures to recharge groundwater or find alternative water sources.
The government has taken up Mission Bhagiratha (MB) to stop dependence on the borewells as the water drawn from them was not clean and polluted. Water being drawn from the borewells has high salinity fluoride and other pollutants.
The works of the MB have been completed up to bulk supply stage and from there the water has to reach households through the pipes. This needs laying of intra-village pipeline network. The works would begin from March and it may take three to four months to complete the works.
As there were good rains last monsoon, agriculture activities have been taken on a large-scale and the groundwater has been tapped through 38 lakh borewells. Excess drawal of water has led to fast depletion of groundwater. It has been observed that the groundwater level has dropped to 8 metres below the surface in the past two weeks which is two metres higher than the last year.
