Water woes flood Krishna district
In Krishna district alone, 60 villages of tail-end areas of Krishna delta in Kalidindi, Krittivennu, Koduru, Pedana, Bantumilli, Nagayalanka and Kaikaluru mandals are facing severe drinking water crisis. The officials are transporting water through tanks and depending on bore wells at some places.
Vijayawada: Several districts in the state are likely to face severe drinking water crisis in the present summer. The problem will be multiplied with increasing temperatures.
In Krishna district alone, 60 villages of tail-end areas of Krishna delta in Kalidindi, Krittivennu, Koduru, Pedana, Bantumilli, Nagayalanka and Kaikaluru mandals are facing severe drinking water crisis. The officials are transporting water through tanks and depending on bore wells at some places.
Though two tmc of water released from Srisailam reservoir, only one tmc water reached Prakasam barrage. The officials are planning to release water in a couple of days to fill nearly 600 drinking water tanks of Krishna district.
As the flyover works are going on at Prakasam barrage, the water release was delayed. However, officials express doubts that the water released from barrage may not be sufficient to meet the drinking water needs for the coming three months.
Meanwhile Visakhapatnam city is also likely to face drinking water shortage and the officials are planning to release one tmc of water from Yeleru reservoir to meet drinking water needs of Visakhapatnam.
Coming to Vijayawada city, the municipal officials are facing difficulty to meet the demand with the fall in water levels in Krishna river. Municipal Commissioner G Veerapandian said that they were supplying 167 million litres of water per day.
Admitting drinking water problem in the city, Mayor K Sridhar said that they pressed into service water tankers and released Rs 2.65 crore to meet drinking water needs in the city. He said that they were planning to dig additional bore wells in three circles of the city to meet the demand of drinking water supply.
In a review meeting here on Thursday, Minister for Water Resources Devineni Umamaheswara Rao admitted drinking water shortage. He asked the officials of all departments to act in a coordination to solve the drinking water problem. He said that the government appealed to Krishna River Board to release another two tmc of water to meet the drinking water needs of Krishna district. He said the Krishna River Board agreed to release 4.5 tmc of water to Guntur and Prakasam districts.
He said as per the instructions of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, they were planning to supply drinking water to all the districts with a continuous monitoring. He stressed the need for using the water judiciously in view of water shortage and prevailing heat wave conditions.
