The Times of India            15.11.2010

Water Board to extend supply

 HYDERABAD: With copious inflows into three major water sources, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) wants to extend daily water supply to four lakh customers in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) core area (erstwhile MCH area) from January 1, 2011.

"The Water Board is presently supplying daily water to nearly two lakh households in GHMC core area. Due to considerable inflows into Manjira, Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs in the past four months, we are steadily adding new areas to the daily water supply list. We have set a target to reach four lakh customers by January, 2011," HMWS&SB director-technical S Prabhakar Sharma told TOI.

Daily water supply had commenced in November, 2008, for 3.32 lakh connections in GHMC core area, Kukatpally and L B Nagar municipal circles. Later, the daily supply was discontinued as water level hit dead storage at Osmansagar.

The Water Board is presently drawing 335 million gallons a day (MGD) from the three reservoirs. In addition to the piped water supply, about 25 MGD of ground water was also being trapped by consumers. Due to the recent rains in the catchment areas, there was considerable inflows into the three reservoirs. As a result, the total storage stood at 39.091 TMC as against the available capacity of 39.733 TMC, he added.

The Water Board supplies 82.47 MGD to 12 surrounding municipal circles and 3.80 MGD to the Secunderabad Cantonment. The HMWS&SB has nearly three lakh customers in the surrounding municipal circles. Worst-hit are the municipal circles of Malkajgiri, where water is supplied once in 10 days, and Alwal, where it is once in four days.

"Wherever daily water is not possible in surrounding municipal circles, it will be provided at least on alternate days instead of the present once in four to five days," the official said.