Manjeera, city lifeline, dries up

HYDERABAD: Water in Manjeera reservoir, in a good year with rains, spreads over 10 square miles at its full capacity. The upstream Singur boasts of a much larger water spread of 164 square miles under similar circumstances. But today, Manjeera, a major source of drinking water for Hyderabad, is desolate, dotted with puddles of muddy water, grass and bushes growing in large clumps and birds making a good meal of insects and fish left in the dry river bed. However, farmers from nearby villagers have begun making the most of the current drought by tilling the reservoir bed to plant crops on its rich soil.Such is the grim situation that water gauges in both reservoirs stand a few feet above the dry lake beds.While water supply has been cut both to nearby Sangareddy and Hyderabad, local farmers too are a worried lot. Ratna Goud, a farmer of Kalpagoor village adjacent to Manjeera river, who has planted sugarcane and paddy in five acres this Kharif, is heartbroken. “This year, the sugarcane yield was satisfactory but I’m worried about next year. We have been cultivating sugarcane in over 90 acres in the village for the past four decades and depend entirely on Manjeera water.”Another farmer, Banothu Lingam from the same village, said, “In case there is no rainfall next year, we have no other option, but to commit suicide. I cultivate sugarcane in about 10 acres.”This is for the first time in 30 years that the water levels have touched the rock bottom in Singur and Manjeera. The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) which normally draws 75 MGD from Singur and 45 MGD from Manjeera, has stopped doing so from December 1.As per an assessment by the Water Board, it requires as much as 602 MGD of water (Osmansagar-25+Himayathsagar-15 +Singur-75+Manjira-45 + Krishna (Phase-I,II and III-270 + Godavari water-172 MGD) to meet the needs of city and the 11 GHMC circles on its periphery. But because of the poor monsoon and the drying up of reservoirs, the board is facing unprecedented crisis.Even if Godavari drinking water project (172 MGD) and Krishna Phase-III (270 MGD) are ready for operation by the end of January next, the city and peripheral circles would get only 442 MGD of the 602 MGD the Water Board needs to quench the thirst of nearly 8.90 lakh of its households.