It’s raining, but lifeline reservoirs not brimming for Hyderabad taps to gush

HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply & Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) plans to supply drinking water daily to households in the city may have to wait for another month.


For, despite the upstream areas of

Osmansagar and Himayathsagar

witnessing heavy rains, not a single drop of water has reached the twin reservoirs, which are the main source of potable water for the city. According to HMWS&SB officials, though the recent spell of rainfall has managed to fill up the upstream areas of these two crucial reservoirs, it will take another two to three good spells of rainfall in their upstream areas for the inflows to reach the twin reservoirs as the water has to travel a distance of 10-15km from

Ananthagiri Hills

.

While the recorded water level at Osmansagar reservoir on Saturday was 1778-ft as against an FTL (full tank level) of 1790-ft, a deficit of 2ft, the

Himayathsagar

reservoir had a huge 10ft deficit on Saturday with a recorded water level of 1753ft as against the FTL of 1763ft. “It will take at least two months for the water inflows to reach the FTL level at Himayathsagar,” the official said. “If the inflows into these reservoirs increase, only then will the Water Board be able to provide potable water on a daily basis. But this will also depend on the decision of the chief minister and HMWS&SB chairman K Chandrasekhara Rao,” said the Water Board official.

This means that though HMWS&SB is all geared up to draw water from the twin reservoirs, it will have to wait at least till August end to resume drawing its assured quantum of 40 million gallons of water per day (MGD) from them. In fact, the Water Board has not been able to draw 40MGD water from these twin reservoirs for the past one and a half years as it has not got the necessary orders from the state government.

“In view of the rainy season, we have attended to maintenance works of these twin reservoirs like repairs and painting of the crust gates because we have not operated these gates for the past one and half year,” the official added.