No water crisis in city, claim ministers

HYDERABAD: The state government on Wednesday claimed that there was no drinking water crisis in areas under the GHMC limits as was being reported in the media.

After an emergency meeting chaired by chief minister K Rosaiah to review the situation, city ministers D Nagender and Mukhesh Goud told the media that “water supply to all GHMC areas will continue without any interruption as the reservoirs which are drinking water sources of the city have enough water to meet the requirements till September. The maximum reduction in the duration of water supply could be 10-15 minutes in all GHMC areas and this includes peripheral municipalities.

The installed capacity from all sources for the city is 340 million gallons a day (MGD). Singur reservoir can serve till September 2010 by emergency pumping at the rate of 120 MGD. Himayatsagar can provide water till December at the rate of 16 MGD.

However, the Osmansagar water level has gone down to 0.18 TMC and the water quality has become a matter of concern. The present level of Osmansagar reservoir is 1761.25 feet as against the maximum level of 1790 feet. The present capacity is 0.18 TMC as against the maximum capacity of 3.90 TMC. As the water quality of Osmansagar has deteriorated, the experts suggested stopping supply from it till the reservoir gets fresh inflows. Reduction of supply from the existing one hour to 45 minutes on every alternative day is initiated to rationalise the supply in the entire GHMC areas.

This has resulted in proportionate reduction of water supply to areas like Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills, Erragadda, Serilingamaplly, Kukatpally, Qutbullapur, Alwal and Malkajgiri which fall under the Krishna command area. The ministers said that drawal of water from Osmansagar was being gradually stopped and release from Krishna enhanced. Consultations are also being made to install Activated Carbon Filters to improve the quality of water, they said.

The areas that get Osmansagar water are Humayannagar, Kakatiyanagar, Vijaynagar Colony, Syed Nagar, Road No 12 of MLA Colony, Red Hills, Gunfoundry, Allabanda, Hindinagar etc. They said an action plan to commission a study to protect the water quality of reservoir like Osmansagar would be taken up by agencies like NEERI, EPTRI and TCE. They would also suggest a state of the art technology for a new water treatment plant near Osmansagar and convey the treated water through closed pipe line instead of open channel at tentative cost of Rs 100 crore, Mukesh added.