A water crisis appears to be looming large in the city in the summer months due to severe drought in the region. The problem is two-fold: low water levels in the region’s reservoirs and receding groundwater levels.
The city receives 1,450 million litres per day (MLD) of water from the Cauvery and will get 775 MLD more once the Cauvery V Stage is commissioned in April. The city also depends on groundwater resources for up to 700 MLD every day.
While the groundwater crisis is evident and acute, officials are hoping that the drinking water needs of the city are prioritised over other uses from the reservoirs in the Cauvery basin and Bengaluru will be able to scrape through till the monsoon sets in, in June.
The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has written two letters to Cauvery Neeravari Nigam Ltd., appealing to them to reserve 1.6 tmcft of water every month till March and 2.42 tmcft of water every month from April.
“There is just enough water to meet the drinking water needs of the region, including Bengaluru. But if the government releases water to save the standing crops like it recently released the Krishna waters from reservoirs to save the chilli crop, the water scarcity is going to be severe. Even otherwise, there are many variables: the Cauvery Water Management Authority may ask us to release more water to Tamil Nadu and we need to account for evaporation losses and dead storage, which may lead to a shortage. We need to manage the resources judiciously,” said a senior BWSSB official.
Campaign to save water
Given the precarious situation, the BWSSB is all set to launch a ‘Save Water’ campaign in two weeks.
Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar has instructed the BWSSB to launch a water conservation campaign for this summer. “The campaign will appeal to industries to try to use reused water and common citizens to save water at homes,” said Ram Prasath Manohar, BWSSB chairman. People will be asked to stop washing vehicles with running water, avoid using bathtubs, showers, and try to reuse water if possible, sources said.
Depleting groundwater levels worsen situation
The water crisis is already acute in outer zones, areas not getting Cauvery water and are dependent on groundwater. Most of the apartments in these areas have been dependent on water tankers, which have become hard to come by and prices have shot up considerably in the last month.
“Groundwater levels are depleting and borewells are going dry. We are not able to find adequate water. We have three borewells, of which two have gone dry. While it used to take 20 minutes to fill a 12,000-litre tanker earlier, it now takes nearly three hours. So the output is so less and we are not able to service even our regular customers,” said Ramesh Reddy, a water tanker businessman in Mahadevapura zone.
The price of a tanker load of 12,000 litres, which was ₹1,000 to ₹1,200 a month ago, has shot up to ₹1,500 to ₹1,700. “In another month’s time, it will cost more than ₹2,000,” Mr. Reddy said.
While some tanker businesses are trying to drill more borewells, illegally, drawing the ire of residents in Mahadevapura, prompting the Minor Irrigation Department to form a Special Task Force to check the menace, the spate of new borewells have also come down as many have failed of late.
Of the 11,000 government-owned borewells in the city, 800 have been completely out of service and even in those functional, water levels are receding. “We have asked all zonal officers to come up with action plans to rejuvenate these borewells,” Mr. Manohar said.
Storage in KRS, Kabini reservoirs
The water level in the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) on Saturday, January 13, was 95.53 ft as against the maximum level of 124.8 ft while in Kabini the reservoir, the level was 2,272.5 ft as against the maximum of 2,284 ft.
The cumulative storage in the KRS and the Kabini reservoirs — the two major sources of drinking water to millions of people in the Cauvery basin of the State — was nearly 32.89 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) on Saturday.
While the quantum of water available in the KRS is 19.51 tmcft, the storage is 13.38 tmcft in Kabini. The storage position may appear to be comfortable on the surface. But in comparison, 40.96 tmcft of water was available in the KRS on the same day last year and the cumulative storage in both reservoirs was 53.67 tmcft which brings to the fore the severity of the monsoon failure in 2023.
Again, about 4.5 tmcft of water from the KRS and 3.52 tmcft from the Kabini reservoir has to be discounted for dead storage which reduces the available water for consumption to around 25 tmcft.
The Bengaluru-Mysuru belt requires about 3.5 tmcft of water a month and if the region has to evade a water crisis in the coming summer, the available storage in the reservoirs has to be reserved exclusively for drinking purposes, thereby denying water to farmers to save the standing crops.
(With inputs from Mysuru)
