Water crisis looms over Marathwada, 3 big dams run dry

The situation is serious... For now, we can manage water supply by putting in place proper measures... PANKAJA MUNDE, state’s rural development minister and guardian minister for Beed

MUMBAI : The water availability situation in Marathwada, the drought-prone central region of Maharashtra, is grim with overall stock in all its major, medium and minor irrigation projects down to 1,817 million cubic metres (mcum), or 24.65% of its designed capacity, on Saturday.

What’s worse: three of the region’s nine big dams have run dry with zero live storage, as per data collated by the state’s water resources department. Manjara, Majalgaon and Sina Kolegaon dams supply water to Latur, Beed and Osmanabad districts of Marathwada. Another big dam, Yeldari, which supplies water to Parbhani district, has just 9% of its live storage. Live storage, a term used in flow irrigation, means the water in the dam reservoir is high enough to flow out of the sluice gates to be disbursed by canals.

The stock in the biggest dam in the region, Jayakwadi, too, is down to 34%. Jayakwadi dam was 100% full at the same time last year. Overall, the water stock in Marathwada’s dams was around 69% last year.

Beyond big dams and irrigation projects, the ground water table in the region – 67 out of its total 76 talukas and nearly 9,144 villages – has also depleted by 1 to 3 metres as compared to a fiveyear average, according to a report by the state’s Groundwater Survey and Development Agency (GSDA) in September.

With another six to seven months to go for the next monsoon, state ministers, officials as well as water experts admit the situation in the region is “severe” and a re-run of the 2016 and 2013 drought seems imminent.

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