Water scarcity gets scary

World Water Day will be observed as usual on March 22 even as citizens of Greater Hyderabad continue to be deprived of even the minimum litres per capita of water per person per day of 165 litres (LPCD) a norm set by the WHO, or 150 LPCD as per the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation. This translates into 140 litres in cities with underground drainage as per the Centre’s benchmark.

While the LPCD is below 120 in the twin cities, it is less than 80 LPCD in surrounding municipalities. From a 24-hour water supply in 1967-68, to alternateday supply of less than 2 hours in the core city and once-a-week supply for an hour in several colonies in surrounding municipalities, the quantity, quality and duration of water being supplied has been gradually going down. Experts warn that the current water scarcity will only turn worse if stringent measures are not taken to protect water bod- ies, harvest rain water, recharge ground water and educate citizens about the importance of water and its usage.

“The water requir-ement in the city will go up to over 50 TMC per annum by 2030 from the present 20 TMC. Then we will require even Krishna Phase-IV in addition to the first three phases of Krishna and Godavari respectively. The focus should be on preventing encroachment in catchments to allow maximum inflows into reservoirs,” said former Water Board engineer-in-chief D. Ramakrishna.