Hyderabad: Some houses in low-lying areas still inundated

HYDERABAD: The last 28 days have been a living hell for residents living in low-lying areas of Jeedimetla, especially

Uma Maheswari Colony

and

Subhash Nagar

. They say they’d rather forget the nightmarish experience when water from the Fox Sagar lake gushed into their homes last month.

Weeks later, with their houses still inundated, many have locked up and moved to other areas.

G Adinarayana, a resident of Uma Maheswari Colony said: “It has been almost a month and the water is yet to recede. We have made temporary arrangements to stay,” he said adding, “I visit the house only to check our belongings.” Rain water entered homes here through Fox Sagar weir and temporary water channel, which was set up to flush out surplus water. Fox Sagar lake was filled up to 34.5 feet on October 19 as against its maximum depth of 37 ft .

If water level exceeds 34 ft, there is every risk of inundation. A crestfallen resident of Subhash Nagar, Sammaiah Yadav Sammaiah Yadav said: “If the sluice gate of the 120-year-old Fox Sagar lake was maintained properly, the need to create an artificial channel would not arise. I request authorities to fix this and put an end to our plight.”

Irrigation department officials said that there would have been no risk of inundation, even if water level crossed 40 ft, had there been no encroachments and illegal structures. In fact, these had to resort to

contingency measures

as otherwise the situation would have turned worse. “Fox Sagar is included in the list of lakes where permanent measures are being taken up,” said Hyder Khan, executive engineer, irrigation department.

While officials started discharging surplus water from Fox Sagar on October 19 they managed to bring the water level only up to 32.8 ft only in the last week of October. Krishna Chaitanya, GHMC executive engineer,

Quthbullapur

circle, on the other hand, said the artificial channel was opened to divert water and reduce the load on Fox Sagar.