Singur goes bone dry due to water mismanagement
No account for 3 tmc ft Singur water this year
Amid allegations of diversion of water to other districts overlooking the drinking needs of the State capital and district headquarters Sangareddy, Singur reservoir presents a pathetic picture at the fag end of the current water year which concludes on May 31 as it has gone near bone dry.
With a carry over storage of 7.64 tmc ft at the beginning of this water year on June 1, 2018, the reservoir was in a position to meet the drinking water needs of Hyderabad and nine other Assembly constituencies in the erstwhile Medak district including Sangareddy town as it has received another 2.47 tmc ft of inflows during the flood season.
However, insensitive decisions expecting good inflows into the reservoir as had happened in the recent years have led to the present scenario as about 2.4 tmc ft water was released downstream of the reservoir to meet the command area irrigation needs under Nizamsagar project and Ghanpur anicut.
Official sources overseeing the management of water in Singur reservoir told The Hindu on condition of anonymity that supply of drinking water from the source was stopped both to Hyderabad and Sangareddy towns towards the end of February itself as the water level slipped below the pumping level. “Apart from evaporation losses to the tune of around 30 to 40 cusecs every day, about 60 cusecs of the reservoir water is being used for drinking needs in rural areas of nine constituencies now”, the officials explained.
The sources said that the allegations, particularly being made by Sangareddy legislator T. Jayaprakash Reddy, pertaining to diversion of water from Singur had nothing to do with the current water year. Expecting that there would be more than 35 tmc ft inflows during the last year, about 14.5 tmc ft water was released downstream although the actual quantity received by the reservoir was 27.7 tmc ft.
However, there appears to be no account for over 3.6 tmc ft water available in the reservoir during the current water year as out of over 10.11 tmc ft water including the carry over quantity and inflows during the year, less than 7 tmc ft water has been utilised for different systems depending on Singur.
According to officials, 2.34 tmc ft was utilised for Hyderabad and Sangareddy both directly from Singur and its dependent storage facility of Manjeera reservoir, nearly 2 tmc ft was given to Mission Bhagiratha (nine constituencies) so far and another 2.4 tmc ft was given to Nizamsagar and Ghanpur. Including evaporation losses of about 0.005 tmc ft, the drawal water from Singur for different purposes comes to less than 7 tmc ft.
Repeated efforts to get clarification on the discrepancy in the water account from the officials concerned resulted in naught.
For the record, drinking water needs of Hyderabad have an allocation of about 7 tmc ft, Nizamsagar has allocation of another 8.35 tmc ft, lower riparian rights have allocation of 4 tmc ft and canal systems under Singur have an allocation of 2 tmc ft out of 29.9 tmc ft storage capacity of Singur.
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